Whatever Happened to Municipal Wifi?
Who killed the great municipal wifi bandwagon of the early '00s, when every city worth its name was going to supply free (free, I tells ya!) or cheap wireless service for every resident? George Mason prof and Reason contributor Thomas W. Hazlett has answers in a provocative piece at Ars Technica. A snippet:
In 2005, Philadelphia's Chief Information Technology Officer, Dianah Neff, lectured: "Just as with the roads of old, if broadband bypasses you, you become a ghost town." The Philly CITO surely did not know that, by 2008, well over 100 million U.S. subscribers would be linked to the Internet via advanced data networks, wired and wireless, virtually every one of them supplied by unregulated private competitors, none via municipal wireless. So, yeah, Philadelphia. We get it.