M2Z Wants To Build a Big, Free, Wireless Internet
M2Z is a wireless broadband startup brought to you by the FCC’s wireless bureau’s former head, John Muleta, and Milo Medin, who, at 23, built a NASA data network that became the huge NASA Science Internet, linking researchers in 16 countries and six continents. M2Z wants to build a wireless network that will offer you a third option to cable and DSL. The service would be offered for free, and would be supported by advertising. "M2Z’s ultimate goal, through its own service, is to drive development of the broadband marketplace so that access is affordable and future penetration levels are near-ubiquitous throughout the country," their FCC filing states. They are asking the FCC to grant them a 15-year license so they can offer free 512 kilobits per second broadband service. (source: Reuters)
The full FCC filing is availalbe here in a PDF file. A free wireless internet would be great, but it sounds too good to be true. Om Malik thinks so. Hmm…so do I.
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With U.S. markets in mind, this might seem less likely, but developing countries use wireless all the time to get internet connectivity to regions that would be expensive geographically to connect otherwise. We already have a wired infrastructure, so it might be less cost-competitive.
This is worth reading