This article over on C-Net suggest that spending on Municipal Wi-Fi networks like those in several large cities and many small ones will proliferate over the coming years with costs in the hundreds of billions of dollars. It will be interesting to see how people react as there will then be little to protect them from Big Brother should it decide to monitor the activity of the users. Currently your ISP offers some protection from such activities. You don’t probably do anything all that bad, but what if you buy something on-line and then forgot to pay the state or city sales/use tax? They would know it and be able to monitor your purchases if they desired. I bet everybody you know has done something like that at one time without giving it a second thought. Outages would be widespread if virtual monopolies develop in these markets as well. Remember that there is a large likelihood that a successful wi-fi install will bump out many of the traditional providers who cannot affort to compete. So invest now I guess, but see what the reaction is too.

This article was posted on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 7:25 pm