Is City-Wide Wi-Fi a Dead Idea?

An anonymous reader writes "Remember all those projects to cover cities with Wi-Fi? The BBC wants to know what happened to them. When it comes to underground wireless data access, there are obvious issues regarding implementing a wireless infrastructure in underground stations and tunnels, but above ground the BBC suggests that it may be other advancements, such as Wimax, that have made Wi-Fi a less attractive solution. PCMag, on the other hand, suggests that public Wi-Fi isn't dead at all and will make a comeback due to the increasing popularity of Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones. So, will city-wide Wi-Fi make a real comeback, or have other technologies, such as Wimax or 4G, killed the concept for good?"

Comments

Yes, I'd like the government as my ISP, please!

[The Gold Tooth]

Government at all levels -- federal, state, and local -- has done such a splendid job at whatever it's undertaken (public education, DMV, road maintenance, etc.), I think they should enter the ISP business too. With government's reputation for excellence in cost efficiency, product delivery and customer service, we're sure to get better ISP service from the government than we do today under private companies. Yea, government! So good, so great!

Re:My experience with city-wide Wifi

[schnell]

At least in the USA, this has largely been quashed by the telcos in the courts, claiming that such networks are unfair competition to their price gouging mobile data plans.

The courts in the US have had nothing to do with the failure of municipal WiFi networks. Where these muni WiFi networks have failed, they have done so because they lacked a business model. The first generation of these efforts especially (I'm looking at you San Francisco and Philadelphia) were the product of starry-eyed city governments believing they could provide citizens with free network access at no cost to themselves, and crack-smoking startups and floundering incumbent telcos like Earthlink imagining they could somehow make money on this.