Swapping carrots for open source internet maybe?

"Once in awhile we get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if we look at it right" - Hunter/Garcia

There will be an Internet, but architected differently to now. Fibre optic cables and WiMax will be the basis of it IMHO. The Apache Money server will sit at the heart of Community Networks funded and operating as "Open Corporate" Cooperatives.

I also see a broadcast overlay, by the way, since IPTV is a complete non-starter. It's fine for one to one delivery eg Video on Demand, but one to many delivery of HDTV - forget it.

An interesting thought is also that using this model it is possible literally to broadcast to consumer set top boxes the static frameworks and periodically updated data major websites.

Turbocharge Teletext in other words.

I call it the "Broadcast Web". See

http://www.opencapital.net/papers/broadcastweb.htm

I spent two years working with a company that delivered television direct to the desktop by satellite broadcast of encrypted data. In order to access the encrypted data, users had to have a "router" box and an internet connection as a "back channel".

It worked brilliantly - I was watching the twin towers fall from my office on my PC at the time.

But it died the death because they got into bed with BT and BT fucked it up (inadvertently, not deliberately).

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

For intra-urban internet there is no problem, current consumer technology does the job:

http://meraki.net/news/2007/06/03/meraki-introduces-first-solar-powered-outdoor-wi-fi-access-kit/

But that suppose of course someone is still able to build integrated circuits somewhere in the world (solar panel and computer parts), otherwise the digital world will not exist at all.

Note that wifi bandwidth is currently limited by human laws (frequency space for TV, military, telcos, etc...) not by current technology or safety limits.