Of course no sooner than the issue of Philadelphia's mega-WLAN deployment was discussed here, Verizon changed its initial position in support of the controversial House Bill 30, and allowed the project to go through (at least for Philly).  The bottom line was that HB 30 was still signed, and the implication of that is that ILECs such as Verizon would have the right to keep local governments from setting up paid services like Philadelphia after January 1st, 2006.

Philly sought assurances from Verizon that the carrier would not fight its WiFi project in the event that its in-service date would not meet the requirements of HB 30.  There are indications that the city believes it will complete the $7-10 million deployment only by June of 2006.  So what's the bottom line?  Other cities in Pennsylvania will only be able to deploy a similar service until the first day of 2006.  After that, the ILEC will get the first rights of refusal (in other words, the local government will have to offer the ILEC the right to provide the service).  This bill will not affect free services.

It is laudable that Verizon allowed the Philly deployment to go through.  But the issue still is that the RBOC will have a first hand say (after the start of 2006) about which service gets deployed in each municipality from its ILEC region.  The fundamental question then becomes: will this law set a precedent that will influence similar projects in cities across the U.S.?