World's Biggest Wireless Hot Spot!

This story is from an Asian newspaper (link via Google News), but the news hits closer to home: Philadelphia has plans to turn itself into a huge Wi-Fi hot spot, with cheap or free wireless service available to all. That would be bad news for Starbucks and others who charge for wireless access, but good news for Philly folk and anybody passing through. (I can already envision myself wolfing down a cheesesteak while checking e-mail.)

The story also reports on other towns both big (Cleveland) and small (Chaska, Minnesota) that are going wireless in a big way. (Here in San Francisco, we have the admirable SFLan, but it's not pervasive enough that you know for sure whether a hot spot will be available in any particular spot until you give it a try.)

I'm a Wi-Fi addict, but two remaining problems with hot spots are the fact that they're often pricey (at least if you want all-you-can-eat access on a nationwide basis) and the fact that you've got to guess whether a network's available when and where you need it. In Philadelphia, at least, those problems may be going away--and where Philly leads, may the rest of the nation follow.