WiMAX rollouts will have to replace WiFi if municipal access is going to be useful outside of the densest urban areas. Unfortunately, Clearwire and Sprint Nextel hold most of the US WiMAX spectrum (2.5GHz), so it kind of depends on the speed at which those two move forward, and whether or not they sell bandwidth to subcontracting carriers.

In Portland we have metro-fi. It's a joke. The signal is amongst the weakest of signals you can get, and there are thousands more of open access points you can get pretty much anywhere. I think the last quoted figure was up to 10,000 *peak* in use. (In an area with over 1.5 mil)

Thankfully, our city didn't pay a dime, and it's all on Metro-fi's expense, but it's been the butt of jokes here as far as wasting legislator's time.

since when has free internet surpassed free healthcare as a right for the people?

If Philly was smart, they'd let Comcast do it all, and then just give them some tax breaks or something to pay for it.

cities need to get corporations who want to see it involved in getting it set up. I think that's what they're working on in P-town, the city getting the wi-fi and then Cat is going to pick up most of the tab.

When you get a whole city involved, it's bound to get complicated. Hopefully one of these cities will set an example for the rest and get this thing rolling.