Back in September, Philadelphia's WiFi plans were discussed here. The ambitious project called for turning the city's entire main core of 135 square miles into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot.  The plan was to offer inexpensive wireless Internet as a low-cost municipal service, charging end-users less than what is currently charged for DSL or cable broadband. That announcement generated a lot of optimism, since it epitomized the good that a forward-thinking government can deliver to its citizens.

Unfortunately, that did not initially sit well with the commercial interests of the local incumbent phone company, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ).  The RBOC did back House Bill 30 (HB30), a measure that would curb the ability of city governments to provide high-speed Internet access for a fee, effectively making providing a subsidized low-cost service illegal. High tech enthusiasts, activists and users at large are urging legislators and Gov. Rendell to postpone that bill's passage, or perhaps even kill it outright. Governor Rendell has until Nov. 30 to veto the bill or sign it into law.

For that matter, Verizon was not alone in trying to impede these types of deployments.  Other regional and long-distance phone companies (selling broadband Internet to consumers and businesses) have recently increased their efforts to quash similar creative municipal wireless initiatives, in locations such as San Francisco, Chaska (Minn.) and St. Cloud (Fla.).  Verizon has changed its attitude since coming out in support of HB30 and now states unequivocally that it will not block Philadelphia's WiFi plans.

Despite that, the marketplace consensus is that the RBOCs, IXCs and other broadband service providers are crying foul because they argue that a city can raise money via taxes, while a private company must pay interest on borrowed capital.  In the meantime, consumer advocates are claiming that cheap WiFi services fill a void that the operators either cannot or simply have no intention to deliver.  Philly's CIO (Dinah Neff), claims that Philadelphia currently ranks 33rd in the US in terms of availability of wired or wireless connections (less than 60 percent of the city's neighborhoods have the option of subscribing to broadband, either DSL or cable).

The bottom line is that the City of Brotherly Love can still deploy its network (according to this article), as long as it can be operational by January 1, 2006 (the city originally hoped for an in-service date of June 2006). 

But ultimately, the government will have the final say.  If the U.S. is to accelerate its broadband penetration and catch up to leaders such as Korea and Japan, more proactive measures that encourage these types of municipal initiatives are required.  And bills such as HB30 should be shot down, because having a legislature overturn a municipality's ambitious "broadband for all" plan - just for the benefit of a few service providers - does not make sense at all.

Note: Another couple of good articles on the same thread can be found here (another good insight from MuniWireless.com) and here (WSJ article, so password is required).