As regards the slow increase in broadband speeds, we would be partially better off networking between each other via 802.11G at 54Mbps >…
well appart from the number of ip points between any two points in the network, but considering the speed increases of 802.11n about to arrive, Id be very much interested in seeing how fast an associative isp’less wireless cloud network would operate in a city like london, with some of those points sharing their access into the internet. I invisage this would involve firmware modified routers where a private broadband connection was percentage shared over a public wireless network dependant on the level of spare private use capacity occuring at any one moment.
Web servers could also be run of the public side of the wireless network meaning that if a website was on the public wireless network it would not be necessary routing wise to hit the internet, this would mean that overtime we could switch over and develop an isp-less version of the internet powered purely by wireless networking technology and our own electricity bills. The advantage of this would be that as new wireless technologies came out it would advance in speed much faster than Bt seems possible of progressing with their fixed infrastructure, and also there would be no monthly cost, this could be, apart from the electricity/ initial router cost one of the first new truly free utilitys invented in the last one hundred years, after all the wireless spectrum is owned by the public anyway.
I doubt we live in a society intelligent enough to adopt this approach, since weve have almost lost the idea to beleive in something free being something better than paid for product, we almost will companies to charge us for things, when there is no real need to.