I've had a "hot spot" on the 3rd floor of the Petroleum Bldg. for a year or so now. And....my office overlooks The Plaza and Convention Center. If any one woulda' asked, I might have hung my wireless router out the window for all to access.

Ubiquitous wireless internetworking is coming faster than people think. Here, as my friends at work used to say, “in the sticks,” not only do we have at least six coffee shops with WiFi, but you can surf at Sonic, the UPS stores, the Holiday Inn, and a bagel restaurant. A bagel restaurant. How cool is that?

We have three coffee shops without, and I avoid them. The surfable competition will eventually eat them up. I know free access makes a difference to me: Starbucks charges, so I only go there with my wife. They make better snacks than all the rest, but they charge for their Internet.

That annoys me, but I don’t worry. Instead, I wonder how long before T-Mobile and Boingo pay-to-surf hot spots fade away. Free, always on, available everywhere access is coming. As you note, that greatly improves usefulness and attractiveness.

If Geospectrum needs financial help from the MMMD then there is no demand.

And if the MMMD wants technical expertise from Geospectrum then they haven't tried the WiFi at the airport.

Dan, the "ubiquitous access" environment you describe is actually just a series of mini-hotspots which may or may not overlap and permit seamless movement among them, akin to a patchwork quilt...with a lot of missing patches. The ideal situation is more like a blanket, but the issue then becomes whether this is something that the public sector should implement and administer, or whether it's best done by the private sector. Of course, we know who pays in the former, even if the "payment" is masked in a general tax bill. Is that preferable to paying directly to a commercial entity?

As Natalie, our reliable ray-of-sunshine commenter implies, a commercial solution is not always optimal, regardless of who's footing the bill. But I would generally tend to always go with the private sector solution in cases like this.

On the other hand, there may come a time when the concept of commercialized mini-hotspots will seem as ludicrous as privately-owned tollroads between major metropolitan areas. It may be that only the federal government has the resources to bring about a ubiquitous, nationwide wireless blanket. And, given the current state of our physical highway system, that's not a particularly comforting thought, either.

To paraphrase James Thurber:

"It is never difficult to tell the difference between a ray of sunshine and a blogger with a complaint."

...a blogger with a complaint.

Well, that's a redundancy, isn't it? ;-)