Long Island's wireless plan has experienced critic: Craig Plunkett, a long-time Wi-Fi and wireless network operator in the Long Island and greater New York area, criticizes coverage in the local paper. He notes that while the county says that "we're not paying for it," meaning the network that will be bid out, that wireless consulting firm Civitium produced the bid documents, which unfortunately included traces of a previous proposal for Chicago. Plunkett's point isn't to complain about Civitium, but rather the lack of transparency in the plan's development, which includes creation of a local development corporation and other plans that weren't debated before the proposal was released. Plunkett is one of many local firms that might have an interest in bidding on the project (in some part or combination), and objects to a lack of consultation of homegrown expertise.

St. Louis plan proceeds: St. Louis votes for AT&T without putting out an RFP. AT&T will first build a two-square-mile test network--from downtown to St. Louis University--and then extend to another 60 square miles over three years. The network will be free for 20 hours of use each month.

Yuma Wi-Fi firm would rather nobody know about the free service: The folks at Kite, a division of MobilePro, says that April will feature free Internet access, but they're not publicizing it (too late) before the public rollout on May 1. No devices have yet been installed. Just for confusion sake, MobilePro is the parent firm of Kite, which "powers" WAZMetro (Wireless Access Zones). At one point, Kite was NeoReach--in fact, NeoReach is still noted on the WAZMetro site's privacy page.