Sorry my friend, but no. Perhaps for a thriving city with money to burn, but not most.

Giving the finite availability of resources ($$$), I think that municipalities need to focus on higher-level quality of life issues like reducing hunger and crime, and ensuring affordable housing and transportation. While it could be argued that WiFi networks could have a "trickle down" effect in helping those items, I don't think that would happen directly enough to justify the cost compared to the necessities listed above.

Yeah, that's me: practical.

I was going to ramble on a bit more about letting the free market try and make a go of it (and the city could control access to its wealthy areas and compel the company offering WiFi to ensure is available throughout).

But municipalities getting into the WiFi business? Most cities can't get snowplowing, rat control, and garbage pickup done right. WiFi still falls into the "nice to have", not "must have" yet.

I think that part of the logic -- at least, part of it in Hartford -- is that people need jobs. And then, the powers that be start working backward from that. They come to "if we can give them high-tech skills, they can get jobs" and work further along to "we need to build a city-wide WiFi network".

Back in the early stages of exploring the "Hartford WiFi" idea I did a cost workup. I estimated that it would cost $5,400,000 to build a city-wide network, and $1,000,000 a year to maintain it (not counting Internet access, helpdesk, low-cost PCs, or training classes). I wonder if Hartford wouldn't get more bang for the buck by running a $10M "WPA" style works program over five years. It would cost the same, but employ a heck of a lot more people. Of course, the city doesn't have $5.4M, let alone $10M.

Oopsie. I forgot about edukation. lol