(2007-01-12) Time Muni Wifi Issues

The Time Mag article notes a couple issues with Municipal Wifi:

• pricing, Advertising, Supply And Demand: does the city eat the entire cost and keep Free Wifi; do they subsidize the expensive with Advertising; and is demand so low that any non-free price drives usage down, which increases unit costs (because of the fixed Infrastructure costs), etc..

• Censorship: already some cities are running filters. Who decides on how the filters are set? And if subsidized Municipal Wifi crowds out private competition, how does this effect the entire city's access to such material.

  • Boston Ma is doing filtering

• Privacy: if you happen to be politically active, you don't want to leave any embarrassing trails of activity (or let anyone else borrow your computer or account).