No Free Lunches: Taxing WiFi

Finally some biggies are able to push through the legislative maneuvering what they were saying from last 2-3 years. White elephants are not able to innovate, so they are planning to kill the fast growing sectors.
The budget which is sent to congress (by the US President) has clause of imposing the tax on Unlicensed Spectrum (read WiFi). Why they didnt tax Ham Radio, and whats the urgency to tax WiFi.

The news item can be read here:

http://www.rcrnews.com/news.cms?newsId=25545

The Budget details can be accessed at this site:

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy07/browse.html

Now you must be asking, how congress can kill this naive but exploding phenomenon,

If I am a lobbyist, I will put this clause in Telecommunications act '07,

the owner of Equipment shall pay a royalty of $xx amount for each channel and for each individual user accessing the spectrum on the spectrum, only if,

• The user of channel(s) is not the owner equipment transmitted the airwaves in unlicensed band.

This small legislation will kill all the hotspots as well as the plan by municipalities for deploying WiFi.

Good Luck Silicon Valley..