Paul Boutin files an exhaustively researched story on the state of commercial Wi-Fi, with observations on related realms: as is typical with a Boutin story, he talked to many, many people and puts together a picture on the current sporadic usage and patchiness of commercial Wi-Fi that's more complete than anything else seen to date. He's not cynical about it, obviously, but it's clear from the quotes he was able to gather that the current providers have some very hot spots in captive venues, and a lot of fairly cold spots which generate zilch. The article points towards the potential of the big boys (probably cell companies) entering the market in a big way, if only they can make up their minds to do it given their huge investment in currently incompatible, slow data rate technology.