Yesterday, the City of Brotherly Love announced plans to turn all of its 135 square miles into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot.  The ambitious project, announced yesterday by the city's CIO (Dianah Neff), has been pegged at around $10 million and calls for placing APs (Access Points) around the city on rooftops and lampposts.  Once operational, the network would enable users to access the Internet anywhere radio waves can travel.

The yearly OPEX for this undertaking was estimated by Neff to be around $1.5 million annually, geared towards supporting and maintaining the infrastructure.  In order for these costs to be offset, the city will probably need to charge a fee for the service, unless it can secure some advertising revenues, in which case the service would be free of charge.  Either way, Neff assures that a fee would cost significantly less than what is currently charged for DSL or cable broadband.

The CNET article mentioned about similar initiatives in Amsterdam (where a startup called HotSpot Amsterdam launched a wireless network earlier this week), New York and Cerritos, CA. I am aware of other such efforts being pursued in Cleveland (where the service is being offered for free) and Los Angeles (which put an RFP out in July).