St. Cloud, an Orlando Fla. suburb, is one of the country's first free citywide Wi-Fi network experiments, and it's experiencing some growing pains. Dead spots, weak signals and poor maintenance are
keeping some of its residents tied to other ISPs. St. Cloud's municipal government is spending more than $2 million on a network that will reportedly cost $400,000 a year to maintain. So far, the
Associated Press reports that there have been plenty of calls from frustrated users--many of whom can see receivers from their homes but still can't sign on. Hewlett-Packard, the city's partner on the
Wi-Fi project said it's working on addressing the problems. A number of questions regarding free Wi-Fi now arise, like what does this portend for the larger-scale projects proposed by San Francisco,
Chicago, and Philadelphia? Citizens of St. Cloud said they expect users to abandon the service and return to paying for the more dependable services of local phone and cable operators.
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