In Philadelphia, an experiment is underway to blanket the city's 135 square miles with wireless high-speed Internet access. With the dream of citywide wireless networks within sight, experts are claiming that many technical and business issues need to be addressed before this can really go ahead.
"Setting up a citywide network is definitely not as easy as putting up access points all over the place," said Doug Schremp, chief technology officer of BTS Partners, a consulting firm that designs and deploys networks. "There are some technical issues that need to be addressed, and cities really need to look at the operational and business issues that come with building and owning their own network."
Philadelphia currently plans to have their citywide Wi-Fi network up and running by summer 2006.