An article I read online at Financial Times is disappointingly biased towards telecom providers. They report that municipal and "free" wireless internet isn't working, but they offer little substance to that report beyond the opinions of Earthlink and AT&T.
Telecom companies like AT&T have lobbied against municipal wireless networks (eWeek Pulls Socket Puppet from Lobbying Firms Hand, for example). How are they to provide unbiased reporting about the feasibility and potential success of such networks if they are hindering the process at the same time?
It really bothers me that the United States has such slow networks, dial-up, DSL, and otherwise, caused mostly by oligopolies busy trying to maintain their dominance in shifting marketplace, unable to adjust with the advancement of technology. Only now when customers are dropping like flies are telecom companies like Verizon rolling out higher speed networks like FIOS.
To their credit, the Financial Times does include a tangential reference to Meraki, a quiet but burgeoning consumer product company offering mesh networks and ongoing management services for wide area wireless networks. The rest of the content is old news compared to this new leaf in the story of the mythical ubiquitous "ether" network. The key to this story is that Meraki's software allows network nodes to resell bandwidth, bridging the gap between the mass market and the network wholesalers, making the "last mile" the "last hurrah" of the telcos. Remember that old concept of the "local loop fee"? Me neither.