Maybe being near Silicon Valley has a way of altering one’s perspective, but few municipalities have flirted with the idea of offering free Wi-Fi Internet access to its residents more than San Francisco. Google got Wi-Fi up and running in Mountain View, but then demurred on extending the system to San Fransisco, noting they were a search engine company, not an ISP. Then Earthlink—and actual ISP!—took up the cause, only to back out of many of its planned municipal Wi-Fi projects in an effort to cut costs.
