Pleading to Washington for broadband

[Steve Schear]

At 03:00 AM 6/26/2001 -0400, George at Orwellian.Org wrote:
>Excerpt:
>
>#    Likening the task to the 1960s effort to put a man on the moon,
>#    John Chambers, chief executive of Cisco Systems Inc., is asking
>#    that the federal government commit to making broadband connections
>#    available to every home by 2010.
>
>----
>
>http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB993418457489449631.htm
>#
>#    Tech Industry Seeks Its Salvation         June 25, 2001
>#    In High-Speed Internet Connections
>#
>#    By SCOTT THURM and GLENN R. SIMPSON
>#    Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>#
>#    High-tech executives think they've found a cure for the industry's
>#    deepest slump in a decade: High-speed Internet access for
>#    everyone.

What's needed are high-altitude communication platforms powered, from the 
ground, by users in exchange for bandwidth.  Since the 2.4Ghz band was 
originally intended for non-communication purposes (that's why its called 
ISM - Industrial Scientific Medical) why can't (within OSHA limits) small, 
inexpensive, ground stations be built (physically similar to those used for 
the DishNetwork) which both help power the plane and offer a communication 
link?  Beam spread due to the small antennas might be combatted by 
controlling each antenna's phasing to create "virtual" antennas, like the 
new SETI project envisions, for efficient energy delivery.

steve