Beantown's Broadband Blues: Why No Wi-FI?: Scott Kirsner, a familiar name to those who read technology articles, writes about Boston's lack of Wi-Fi, although he points out that change is in the air. He cites an article (see below) that encourages public institutions to open their wireless networks because of the practically zero cost involved. Although acknowledging the chance of hackers, crackers, and spammers, reasonable safeguards could prevent that. Kirsner wants public Wi-Fi - now!
Privacy expert Garfinkel on opening public institutions' wireless networks: I hadn't realized that noted security and privacy expert Simson Garfinkel spent several months as part of a firm trying to build a commercial wireless ISP business that would expand across the globe. He found the back-office stuff the killer, not the networks or network infrastructure. (I've heard the same thing about MobileStar; it cost them $3K/Starbucks to put Wi-Fi in, so how did they burn through $80M? Garfinkel explains.) Garfinkel argues that public institutions for whom incremental bandwidth costs are nil should contribute to the larger community by opening their networks. Likewise, he points out how simple it is for individuals to get bandwidth and feed it out. Running through tens of millions put him on the track of what's becoming the real revolution: community networks. (Garfinkel's books include the superb non-fiction horror title Database Nation and the co-authored (with guru Gene Spafford) Web Security, Privacy, and Commerce.