I've thought several times about creating a sidebar or special page on this site for newspaper articles about the first hotspot in a town: It's a definite journalistic subset, that article. I've read literally hundreds of them, and two more came across the wire this morning, one from Charlotte, N.C., and the other from Fargo, North Dakota.
The best development over time is that reporters have increasingly better resources to draw on and more breadth to focus on. Early articles were, "Starbucks gets Wi-FI!" and focused on a single brand or location. Now, you see writing as in the Fargo piece that brings in municipal Wi-Fi, the scope of installations, and the utility of using Wi-Fi.
A few hours later: Even more -- the town of Whangaparaoa in New Zealand gets free access, and, more incidentally, a new restaurant in Dover, New Hampshire.