• Business Week, Tuesday, May 30, 2006 11 AM

Following the (generally) positive reactions of San Francisco and Philadelphia, it's not surprising that most major cities are planning, or at least pondering, a municipal Wi-Fi network, but as Business Week blogger Olga Kharif points out, expectations need to be brought back to Earth. Why? A couple of myths that are being floated around need to be squashed: first, these Wi-Fi networks will not be free to use, and second, they won't provide ubiquitous access across entire cities. Unless Google is powering your lower-speed network, don't expect free access, and note that not even Google can afford to offer high-speed Wi-Fi for free, so if Earthlink won the bid to wire your city, expect to pay something--they need to make money, you know, and don't forget that the cost of maintaining, operating and expanding these networks is considerable. And here's another thing to consider: it may take more than 10 years for the network providers to address all the dead spots within a city, as each network signal only covers a few square blocks. Kharif's bottom line: "We shouldn't expect miracles."

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