Brendan O’Shaughnessy has an interesting article entitled City is cool to increasing hot spots. The article reports that Indianapolis is taking a slow, cautious approach to equipping the city with wireless hotspots for wireless Internet access. Meanwhile places like Greenwood and Winamac are moving ahead. Some of the caution has to do with potential legislation that would prohibit local governments from providing wireless access to their citizens, instead leaving it up to telecommunications companies to provide the service or not at whatever rates they can get. Another part of the caution is due to a fear that any technology installed will soon be obsolete. I understand the concern, but at the rate technology in this area advances, fear of obsolescence will keep you frozen in place.
I don’t know what the cost of providing city-wide WiFi is, but I suspect it’s relatively cheap. If that’s correct, I think having a reliable, ubiquitous wireless infrastructure will provide advantages to a community that well outstrip the cost of providing it.
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