Video: Dave Hughes, A wireless vision for Wales

Now posted to Google Video:










Dave Hughes, A wireless vision for Wales (Colorado, March 2001)

US grassroots telecoms activist Dave Hughes' wireless vision for Wales: no-licence 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.

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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.

* 2002: The video - originally entitled "Wales' Digital Opportunity - Dave Hughes, Colorado" - is discussed in Howard Rehingold, "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution" (2002)" : see Chapt 6, "Wireless Quilts", pp. 144-153: "Tonga, Mongolia, The Rez, and Wales: The New Electronic Frontiers"; and the Smart Mobs website here

* 2003: John Wilson set up the ABC Access to Broadband Campaign in 2003 with an immediate impact to receive the CNET Networks 2003 Award for Outstanding Contribution to UK Technology, in recognition of the campaign's promotion of wireless as a rural broadband solution.

* 2004: Dave Hughes received the United States Westpoint Military Academy's Distinguished Graduate Award 2004 for his "broadband cowboy" pioneering from Colorado to Everest to Wales.