Hartford's mayor promised free Wi-Fi access to residents citywide in his state of the city address: The Hartford Advocate looks into this network's feasibility. The mayor proposes to not just provide a free network, but also to give computers to less-advantaged local residents. Hartford has had a problem for decades and decades with "rich flight": it may be divided across racial lines, but anyone with any money moved across city lines. The county structure in Connecticut is very weak providing no shield to a big city with big problems. (My wife grew up in West Hartford; I spent five years in New Haven. It's pretty clear that wealthy suburbs can suck a city dry in a way that's not quite the same in other parts of the country.)
Comcast played its hand pretty broadly when the Advocate reported asked for comment. Declining, the spokesperson suggested an analyst at The Heartland Institute, a group I've written about extensively on this site which doesn't disclose funding and released a report rife with direct ties to Verizon and Issue Dynamics, an incumbent telecom and cable PR and lobbying firm.
The work is still in the planning stages, but with only a third of Hartford residents hooked up to the Internet--and 83 percent of the poorest family not surprisingly having no computer--the city sees this as a critical gap they want to close.