A Stitch in Haste

Possibly:

The study, commissioned by the city's Economic Development Corporation, will examine "whether there is a need for a citywide broadband network as a municipal initiative" and what legal, technical, logistical and economic challenges such a project would involve, according to a request for proposals that the city released on June 14.
...
Consultants' proposals for conducting the broadband feasibility study are due on July 21. The first goal would be to assess "the existing state of broadband services" and decide whether a citywide network — or a more limited network — is needed.

That's easy: no.

You can finally access the Internet while in the airport, at the worksite, or even in a taxi with the freedom of the largest high-speed wireless network in the U.S. BroadbandAccess from Verizon Wireless covers more than 1/3 of Americans in more than 180 major metropolitan markets.

You want wireless access in Central Park? Fine. Do what I do and subscribe to it, for $60 per month.

Oh, you don't want to pay $60? You want taxpayers to pay it for you? And that makes you a "hi-tech telecommunications visionary" and "Twenty-First Century urban planner"? Go figure. I thought it just made you a leech.

Wireless broadband is already ubiquitous not just in New York City but practically everywhere in the U.S. Municipal wi-fi, meanwhile, can be made available by the free market anywhere that demand arises. And where demand doesn't arise, it would be a waste to provide it anyway.

Bottom line, unchanged from all my previous posts: Wireless Internet access is no more a public good than is wireless telephone service. It is perfectly excludable -- those who want it can pay for it and those who don't want it should not be compelled to subsidize those who do. Furthermore, governments have no business competing with private firms in private markets. It's the Politics of the Warm Fuzzy Broadband. And it's pure nonsense.

Why won't this absurd concept die the miserable death it deserves?