Now, however, the Wall Street Journal (paid subscription) points out that naysayers such as AT&T, Cox Communications and Time Warner are all bidding on or looking hard at municipal wireless projects. An AT&T spokesman told the Journal that the company is "certainly willing to work with" local governments, "wherever it's a good fit to do so."
It's easy to pick on Big Broadband, since they're the ones lobbying legislatures so hard to keep cities out of the wi-fi biz. But cities, too, have had a change of heart. When they first started talking about wi-fi, it all sounded quite renegade, as though a few tech geeks would scrape together a free-for-all network and put the telephone and cable guys out of business. These days, however, municipal wi-fi sounds more like just another tech business, what with all those RFPs. Not only will the private sector end up building out these services, but consumers will most likely end up having to pay something for them.
