March 2001 | Dave Hughes | A wireless vision for Wales

A video documenting John Wilson's March 2001 visit to American grasroots telecoms activist and no-licence wireless pioneer Dave Hughes, Colorado,  USA. 

Dave Hughes' wireless vision for Wales has a universal currency in its advocacy of no-licence wireless technologies as a "first mile" broadband solution for remote and rural regions, with reference to the community wireless networks model. 

 View in Google Video. 
 

A wireless vision for Wales

US grassroots telecoms activist Dave Hughes' wireless vision for Wales: no-licence 802.11 wireless technologies as a "first mile" broadband solution for remote and rural regions, with reference to the community wireless networks model. 

  • Video filmed and produced by Welsh broadband advocate John Wilson to document a visit to Dave Hughes in Colorado Springs, March 2001. 
  • A tour exploring communications as a means of community regeneration, including: Dave Hughes' Old Colorado City neighbourhood and regeneration efforts; his Old Colorado City Communications wireless ISP and NSF Wireless Project workshop; bench-testing and demonstration of no-licence wireless technologies; plus a concluding polemic on spectrum management policy and the shift to a new paradigm based on shared spectrum use, enabling a wireless commons for the empowerment of the user-producer and the local community. 
  • This technology and knowledge transfer exercise preceded the 2001-2002 emergence and breakthrough of Wi-Fi as a no-licence wireless technology and mass market phenomenon. 

 

Video as advocacy tool 

 This video - and the related video Connecting Keokuk - was used as a lobbying tool to influence government and regulatory policy, as well as grassroots community wireless networking in Wales and across the UK. 

 

Links 

  • (( 1993 Winner of Electronic Freedom Foundation Pioneer Awards ))
  • David R. Hughes, Principal Investigator | National Science Foundation| Wireless Field Test Projects 1996-2002: 1996 Mongolia;  1997-1999 Local History by Wireless Project; 1999-2002 Prototype Testing and Evaluation of Wireless Instrumentation for Ecological Research at Remote Field Locations by Wireless  
  • Nov 1994 |  Paul Baran | "Is the UHF Frequency Shortage a Self Made Problem?"
  • June 1995 | Paul Baran | "On the Shortage of Spectrum": Paper delivered in Bologna, Italy on the occasion of the Marconi Centennial celebration 
  • April 1996 | Dave Hughes |  "The Case for Wireless Shared Public Spectrum" 
  • May 1996 | Dave Hughes |  "Notice of Proposed Rule Making on NII/SUPERNET Bands"  | "This is the important, current NPRM that will decide whether there is 'community no-licence wireless' or not". 
  •  April 1998 | Scientific American (Reproduced with permission) | SPREAD SPECTRUM RADIO | David R. Hughes and Dewayne Hendricks | "As advanced radios are deployed, society must tackle the crucial issue of incorporating (...) incentives within the network infrastructure itself to make the best use of a shared common resource - the radio spectrum".
  • July, 2000 | The COOK Report on Internet | Dave Hughes: Broadband Spread Spectrum Wireless Extends Internet Reach of ISPs & Field Research Scientists 
  • February, 2001 | A-Clue.Com | Marconi's Revenge | by Dana Blankenhorn | Volume VI, No. VII | "Dave Hughes , who has been working in "wireless broadband" for over 15 years now, says there are over 7,000 wireless ISPs (WISPs) today, and more all the time, most of them using 802.11b (a standard designed for Local Area Networks) to share bandwidth in small territories using frequencies at around 2.4 Ghz. (...) Most WISPs are tiny, amateur operations, but some (like InterLink in Keokuk, Iowa ) are already successful businesses, delivering broadband to markets DSL and cable can't (or won't) go. They all operate in small, "unlicensed" frequency bands".
  • June - July 2002 | The COOK Report | Whither No License Wireless? |  | Peter Cochrane Tracks Decline of BT and Rise of 802.11b in the UK | Catalyzing 802.11b Across Wales: Dave Hughes Shows Welsh Leaders How to Establish Community Owned and Operated 802.11b Networks. 
  • newswireless.net | "Don't leave rural broadband to the market" - Minister | by Guy Kewney | 03 December 2002 | Welsh Minister Andrew Davies agrees that "stealth" marketing will bring rural broadband to remote areas - but also believes that Government has to "make up for market value" in some areas. And he uses wireless 802.11b for the job amongst other technologies | Interestingly, his department has been funding wireless experiments too. He was introduced to legendary American hacker Colonel Dave Hughes, who has been preaching spread spectrum wireless as a way of bringing phone and Internet to remote areas for years, and Hughes came over to Wales and set up two pioneer wireless networks. One is called Arwain, which covers much of Cardiff with 802.11b wireless. The other is E-fro, in an old slate valley. Both are subsidised.