The Wireless City

A day after Minneapolis announced they are seeking to follow Philadelphia into the municipal wireless internet ("Wi-Fi") business, Saint Paul's city council votes to study the "best way" to do the same.

Says the Strib article on the subject:

St. Paul's effort to expand wireless Internet access beyond individual coffee shops, restaurants and hotels began inching ahead Wednesday when the City Council voted to study the best way to move forward.

I'm guessing one of the "best way" options was not "allow free enterprise to provide the service, and let the people who want and need it to pay for it themselves, rather than charging all citizens for it". The internet is no more a "public good" than a telephone, garbage service or heat for one's house.

Of course, it's a big piece of business that a city can incorporate as a revenue center, a budget line item, and of course a bunch of job buckets to be filled by scads of loyal public employee-union workers.

The council deferred tougher questions about how much it would cost to implement such a comprehensive network and how direct a role the city would play in providing the service.

Deferred for how long? I'm guessing "...until it's too late to make a better decision". Again, just a hunch.

Posted by Mitch at April 14, 2005 12:11 PM | TrackBack