USA Today reports that Municipal Wi-Fi plans across the nation continue to collapse under the pressure of economic reality. Schemes such as those proposed in Chicago and San Francisco simply don’t make good business sense, which is why they have been abandoned.
I don’t think citizens of these would-be wireless utopias should be upset over the loss of their Wi-Fi blanket, however. Most of these arrangements involved giving exclusive access to city rights of way to one company, creating a new generation of Ma’ Bells–a very dystopian vision. Getting in bed with the government is a bad idea for business, especially network industries, because as time goes by they lose their autonomy and become an atrophied public utility. So though Wi-Fi might give consumers more choice, it’s just another bad choice.
Read more in my piece recently published at American.com.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.