600 square miles of free Wifi-access in Oregon >> we need this in Holland!

This NYT-editorial describes Hermiston, Eastern Oregon, where highschools hold 'kiss the pig' - contests; pretty rural. And you know what? They have the largest wifi hotspot in the world; 600 square miles and they're already starting to introduce WiMax, the next generation of technology after Wi-Fi. What's more: it's free for consumers and has been up and running for more than a year and a half.

Now that's how the cookie crumbles! 600 square miles ~ 1500 square kilometres. Holland has about 35000 in total! And although we do have pigs too, we also have 16.5 million people! And it's not like our flat lands are the most difficult terrain to cover. Kim Puzey, the general manager of the Port of Umatilla, envisions broadband Internet access as just another utility, like electricity or water. I think that's clever thinking, but who am I? Considering the fact that computerchips get 10 times as powerful in 5 years, considering the fact that RFID-chips will break the 5cent barrier in the next 5 years & will then be put in everything, considering the fact that computerscreens get better, thinner and cheaper @a frantic pace, considering the fact that one new blog is being created every second & that everybody I know thinks the Internet is cool, YEAH, I'D SAY A FREE DUTCH NATIONWIDE WIMAX-NETWORK WOULD PROBABLY PAY OFF FOR THE DUTCH ECONOMY!

So are you listening Jan-Peter? (the Dutch government finds being modern very important...). Now, I don't know how much such a thing would cost but, well, first of all, I don't think it would really matter, cause it would pay off anyways, but second of all the Dutch government should easily be able to afford this by using a bit of the money they make on gasoline...

... Yes, we (although I personally do not have a car right now) pay Euro 1,41 for a liter of gasoline. With the Euro being about 1,25 dollars right now, that means $1,76 for a liter, which translates into (3,6 * $1,76 ) = $6,34 for a gallon of gasoline and about 75% of that is money for the government! Now IS THAT a good deal or what!? It truly is, since we have about 7 million cars riding around in our 35.000 square-kilometre pot-clouded water-managed Harry Potter theme park. How much is that per square kilometre per year? Could you finance a Wimax-network with that? All the roads in the world won't alleviate the clogged-ness of the Dutch highways; with a new road here, the bottleneck moves there! Building more roads now results too much in 'bottleneck replacement' and too little in a fundamental solution. So hold back on the roads, build the Wimax-network and by the time it is ready, it can be used by the by-then 8 million cars to communicate with eachother and drive themselves (@ fixed speeds & distances so as to use the existing roads way more effectively).

But, then again, why am I worrying about all this?