low power tv

[Tom Poe]

Tim wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-04-18 at 07:59 -0500, Tom Poe wrote:
>   
>> So, I'm out in the middle of the corn fields.  Our town is roughly 3
>> miles by 4 miles.  There's a population of less than 8,000.  Everyone
>> can "see" the nanostation2 from their homes.  The community wireless
>> network is not connected to the Internet.  So, let's assume everyone
>> has a computer and webcam.  Couldn't they use something like Ekiga,
>> and participate in a videoconference across that network?  I don't see
>> where the telcos/cablecos thugs have anything to do with it.  Do
>> they? 
>>     
>
> It's different people, but a similar situation.  
>
> Who's going to put it together, work out the wrinkles, help people make
> use of it?  I doubt one transceiver is going to work, apart from
> reception issues, there's the issue of how many can use one thing at
> once.  RF is a black art, and networking isn't far behind.
>
> And it's not just the hardware, the software's in the same boat.  Ekiga
> is far from simple to use, it still requires some technical nouse to
> figure it out.  Then you'll have to deal with Windows users wanting to
> use something incompatible with anything but itself.  Who's going to
> help those people, or who's going to find or build something more
> user-friendly?
>
> You're going to either need a band of willing volunteers, which will
> probably tail off rather quickly once they've found out they're in over
> their heads, had to deal with nitwits and late night bitching over the
> telephone.  Or pay people to do it.
>
> Ever worked with community TV people?  I have.  You end up with one or
> two who know what they're doing, plenty who don't (some will admit it,
> the others think they know what they're doing, some will cause you legal
> problems with what they do - copyright, libel, defamation, etc.), quite
> a few wierdoes, lots of in-fighting, a small proportion of outsiders
> who're interested, some insiders and outsiders who'll sabotage or try
> and take over (often entailing nasty legal wrangles), ISPs and telcos
> which'll try and derail you, and a great majority of the public who
> won't care about any of it.  And that's without any of the technical
> issues...
>
> It sounds like you're keen, so you're going to be the first one to
> invest time, effort and money.  If you're not willing, it's already dead
> in the water.  You'll have to convince your town to put in the
> equipment, even if they don't have to pay for doing so.  Then you'll
> have to start generating interest.  You'll get a few friends involved,
> and some will go away after a little while.  You'll get a few strangers
> involved, and you'll wish you'd never met them.  And somewhere along the
> line you'll have to fight off someone who wants to take over and screw
> it all up.
>
>   
Tim:  You're way too real world for me.  Looks like you were at the 
Planning Committee meeting on Monday night.  You should have let me 
know.  :)

So, rather than move the discussion forward, the next thing I know, they 
had decided to form yet another committee to draft a report on their 
findings about FTTH, and its feasibility to complete by 2020.

Ekiga is still a geeky thing for me.  What about Skype?  Would that be 
possible without Internet access?  Maybe xten's lite softphone might work? 
Tom