Wellington, New Zealand, now has 100 hot spots: The hot spots are run by CityLink, a privately-owned business that was first created by the Wellington City Council in 1995. CityLink is trialing Wi-Fi enabled mobile phones on the network. The city gave the company a bunch of money recently to add more hot spots, so that as many as 400 locations are littered around the city.
We may start seeing these kinds of partnerships between city governments and companies in small towns in the U.S. -- places where the Cometas of the world won't bother setting up hot spots just as wireless broadband firms are filling missing cable and DSL modem gaps. We've already seen some city involvement in Portland, but there, the city is just making it easier for hot spot operators to build networks.