Wednesday, August 27, 2008

The Internet is as Fundamental as Hot Water

In July I was part of a press conference supporting a bipartisan campaign Internet for Everyone. I joined Vint Cerf, Lawrence Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain, and Tim Wu, among others. It is my firm belief that low cost ubiquitous internet access is fundamental for participation in our society today, a key tool for achieving energy efficiency (smart buildings; dynamic pricing of roads and energy to reflect peak times; and critical to innovation). This one-minute clip of my contribution sums it up nicely. You can join this important movement here.

3 comments:

Ben said...

What about using the open-source hardware platform being developed by Openmoko to this end? Website: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page

Roy Russell said...

As a hardware platform, OpenMoko is an open smartphone. However, while it is open as far as what you can do from an application point of view, the networking software in the chipsets
which control the radios is not. There is a GSM radio chip in it from Texas Instruments. And a wi-fi chip from Atheros. Both of these devices are proprietary, and only those vendors can change the
firmware that controls how they operate.

Most of the work necessary to support an open mesh would need to be done at levels 0,1, and 2 and these are mostly tied up in the firmware
and radio hardware in the Atheros chipset.

Also, as a hardware platform, OpenMoko contains lots of user interface components. While they are nice, and are useful for some applications, they aren't necessary for the core mesh hardware and
software components.

Interactive Content Management said...

Openmoko, a hardware platform, has a lot of user interface components. they are nice and useful for some applications...