Philadelphia might be known as the city of brotherly love but what it’s generating with its experiment with government-sponsored wireless broadband access is far from that emotion. Last fall, the city aired its intentions to make itself a gigantic WiFi hotspot, a project with a projected price tag of US$10 million. While some municipalities like Cerritos, Calif., and Chaska, Minn., have city-financed WiFi networks for their citizens, no burg has a plan as ambitious as Philadelphia’s. And that has large providers of broadband Internet access — like the Baby Bells and large cable TV companies — worried.
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Fight Heats Up over Municipal WiFi
Posted by: John P. Mello Jr. May 10, 2005 05:00 AMPhiladelphia might be known as the city of brotherly love but what it’s generating with its experiment with government-sponsored wireless broadband access is far from that emotion. Last fall, the city aired its intentions to make itself a gigantic WiFi hotspot, a project with a projected price tag of US$10 million. While some municipalities like Cerritos, Calif., and Chaska, Minn., have city-financed WiFi networks for their citizens, no burg has a plan as ambitious as Philadelphia’s. And that has large providers of broadband Internet access — like the Baby Bells and large cable TV companies — worried.