Giving super fast Internet connections to people who are probably too poor to pay their electric bills regularly, much less buy computers.

-Chris

Could somebody show this article to Britain's ISPs please?

Huzzah! Three cheers for the Internet; the slayer of poverty everywhere!

Yeah, it's not always easy if, for whatever reason, one happens to end up at the bottom of the heap.

@John A Blackley

Certainly for off-peak use the marginal cost to ISPs wouldn't be great, and suitable PCs are often thrown away. The local server plus network setup and maintenance looks to be the most difficult bit, because it needs people who have or can learn the skills.

Something similar was tried in the UK almost a decade ago: (http://www.overmet.net/press/inside_housing/default.htm). I lost touch with the person who had been involved, but it would be interesting to know how the project progressed.

"City residents with, say, a Comcast cable connection are down at 6Mbps." Are you sure? Comcast network must be much better in Frisco than in DC then. I have friends there, and have used their Comcast cable connection. I missed a good old 56 k modem (leaving the phone line free is not even an advantage as their phone line is down most of the time anyway). Most of the time, the (Comcast-intalled) cable modem is not even able to get an IP for more than 1 hr in a row, and then needs hard reboot.

Sounds like the heinous redneck-style rants on how life is easier for the lazy indigent scum is getting closer and closer to reality! (My friends in DC both recently got macbooks pro though, I'm still waiting to see homeless people with these overpriced text processors. Maybe they'll soon get them from the nearest dump, given how secure the last papersheet-thin apple-branded toy recently proved to be...)