US Cell Phone carriers have determined that open wireless networks are a threat to their business model and are starting to wage war against them, reports John C. Dvorak.

It’s about the threat of Wi-Fi overall. And I mean free Wi-Fi in particular. If you take a city the size of San Francisco and give the entire population free high-speed Wi-Fi, think of the applications that will fall into place. That includes VoIP calls galore. Move over, cell phone; hello, Wi-Fi phone.

It’s no coincidence that these commercials for EV-DO and others for plug-in cell phone network cards cropped up just at the same time the market got hit with a slew of Wi-Fi phones and Wi-Fi/cell combo phones. Wi-Fi needs to die! These phone companies are going to do everything they can to trash 802.11, especially 802.11n, which may eventually be as fast as 600 megabits per second.

We can’t allow the cell phone companies to kill off open WiFi through FUD or lobbying efforts. The only threat Wi-Fi poses is to the cell phone companies. Poor them! We have all been nickel and dimed by every cell phone company too long anyway.

Urge your city or town’s elected officials to partner with an ISP or Google to provide municipal open WiFi. Also attend public meetings to voice your support for these efforts. Write your State Representatives and US Congressmen. Free and open WiFi needs to be available for everyone and ever where.

[The Killing of Wi-Fi]

[tags]cell phones, cellular phone, cellular companies, verizon, at&t, cingular, t-mobile, unicell, sprint, gps, wifi, wi-fi, iphone[/tags]