Wirelessing the World Quiz

1) CWN stands for Community Wireless Network. The CWNs allow for wide open, non-proprietary, and freely accessible systems funded by the government, so these networks are paid for with taxes. This allows would-be consumers of profit-driven internet providers a chance to save money and resources with community-provided wireless bandwidth. This greatly assists the bridging of the "Digital Divide" between resource-rich and resource-poor areas because in the case of CWNs, the resources are equal. The poorer areas are receiving the same signal as the richer areas, eliminating a large portion of internet segregation. CWNs are the Civil Rights Acts of wireless internet.

2) Unfortunately, the phrase "The customer is always right" doesn't cover a notion that companies should "Always do right by the customer."In attempts to maintain their control over technology markets, corporations go to some remarkable extremes. As shown to us from our books, the merger between Cingular and AT&T should have been beneficial to the consumer, but instead it put them back. Instead of increasing service, the "New AT&T" pays Sprint a fee to share their network and muddles the line between services, causing confusion amongst the users. With shared networks, consumers can't determine which networks are better and find no reason to switch providers. Bundling is another huge issue in regards to corporations throwing clients under the bus to preserve their success. Companies such as Intel market their Centrino technology, which is a combination of chips that are supposed to enhance their products. However, they overpay for this convenience when the purchasing of separate, less expensive chips would do the job more efficiently. Meinrath informs us of the bundles of the Centrino notebooks, and how it ends up sticking it to the consumer.

3) Corporate consolidation (Cingular/AT&T) and the early buying of technologies make the technology market seem more like the Venezuelan economy- 1% of the population owns 99% of the wealth. The merger between the aforementioned companies caused them to become the largest wireless company at 47 million users. Now that that market has been cornered, they set their sites to new projects. When smaller companies fabricate ideas for new technologies, big companies will swoop in to buy the rights to these products, and since they are generally unproven and untested, they are purchased at a discounted price. Instead of a new company to flourish with the success of their new products, the already-established corporations have increased their product lines, taking more of the wealth.