The city of Philadelphia is proceeding with a project to provide wireless Internet service city-wide:
FORGET cheese steaks, cream cheese and brotherly love. Philadelphia wants to be known as the city of laptops.
The city recently announced a two-year effort to string a free wireless network across its 135 square miles, potentially giving Philadelphia an entirely new identity as the most wired – or unwired – municipality on the planet.
I think this is a very exciting development and it will be interesting to see how well Philadelphia succeeds. It certainly provides an opportunity to level the playing field for both companies and individuals.
One issue that the article doesn’t discuss is the potential for security problems with such a large wireless network. That should provide an opportunity for competing companies to differentiate themselves by providing a product with enhanced security. And that would also be a benefit to Philadelphia.
Another issue that doesn’t seem to be mentioned in the article is that the technologies of Internet connectivity change sufficiently rapidly that it might not make any sense for municipalities—in my experience not the most agile in responding to technological change—to go to the expense and effort.
The initial electrification of American cities required quite a bit of support from city governments so I wouldn’t be surprised if providing universally available high-speed Internet connectivity does as well.
