What's the state of city connectivity?
The WSJ has an article today (subscription required) about a bunch of developments in US city wifi.
MuniWireless.com (running a key conference today and tomorrow in Minneapolis) tells us that there are more than 300 cities across the US that are working on wireless access. There seem to be widely varying ways of providing service, and the telcos are getting into the act. From the WSJ article:
“It's all about the extension of the broadband access for our customers,” says Eric Shepcaro, vice president for business development at AT&T. “It's also about leveraging assets that we already have in place.”
But look at Personal Telco in Portland. Or Wireless Leiden in The Netherlands. Or everything Sascha Meinrath is doing. And don't miss NYC Wireless.
It would be good to know how well open, public, free, non-registration city wifi networks are doing in the US. Once I get my mythical phone that is wireless enabled and open-platform (so that any developer can write software for it that allows me to easily use the location-based services I like), I'll need a free, open wireless connection wherever I go.
Is that too much to ask?