You don't say...

By Ian

What do you mean, municipal wi-fi networks aren't the unalloyed good they were sold as?

Across the United States, many cities are finding their Wi-Fi projects costing more and drawing less interest than expected, leading to worries that a number will fail, resulting in millions of dollars in wasted tax dollars or grants when there had been roads to build and crime to fight.

I was recently in Pittsburgh, PA. Which has a downtown network that can be used "free" for two hours. I say "free", since I had to register. For the benefit of sending my info to the city, which I assume logged my IP and thus knew roughly where I was and more...I got slow service that could only be used in certain positions since the repeaters were weak and stationed poorly for coverage.

But, you know, it's hard to tell how these things will pan out.


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