Could a basic free access system with charges for extra bandwidth be built on that?
you as an individual could do anything you liked with your node but bear in mind that making things free carries its own cost (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)
I was thinking everyone on it would need an account pre-charged with bitcoin to debit and the free access could only be done by having an account which is kind of inconvenient
I imagine that you might load credit on a pgp key you had agreed on for each node. no need for centralization.
a splash page when you connect that informs you what your connected to, offers connection options and just lets you continue to your requested page would be good but I don't see how it could be done.
yea you might need to write custom firmware O.o wayyy beyond my understanding. Im more into economics than computer science.
Also, would it need something like its own credits to be able to use different networks anywhere you go without multiple accounts or could the network and software handle that kind of thing its self?
if the government left the technology alone then there would certainly be pressure towards standardization. For starters any entrepreneurs would probably own multiple nodes each. Then they would stand to benefit from uniting in networks sort of like the machinima network that would allow for customers to pay at one address and get shard credit on many many nodes. Now if the government started trying to attack weaknesses than this would be one of them so you would likely end up paying for credit that you never used in parts of the world that you dont go to often due to minimum transaction limits on bitcoin.
