Esme Vos, Wireless Warrior

The Wall Street Journal offers a great introduction of Esme Vos, possibly the most effective advocate of Municipal Wireless efforts in the World. I know she helped us out advocate our way past Cable and Phone Companies-backed fear-mongering, back when we first deployed our WiFi Network in Hermosa Beach in 2004.

In the future, she sees wireless networks nearly everywhere, not just for Web access but for voice services as well. "It will shrink the traditional business model dramatically," she says. Traditional telecom companies, she argues, will be forced to form partnerships with Internet companies to offer next-generation services. "They'll have to change," she says.

The article gives you a good insight into how far your local Telco will go to protect their monopoly, and offers good counterpoints to their typical rhetoric.

See also: Net Neutrality and the Sorry State of U.S. Broadband