The AM Forum

City Hall will seek proposals from private companies to extend high-speed wireless Internet service to all Chicago neighborhoods at little or no cost to consumers, Mayor Richard Daley announced Tuesday.

Exactly how the Wi-Fi system would be installed, how its benefits would be extended even to the city's poorest areas and how the system would provide profits for the company that operates it will be up to the firms that respond, officials said.

If a few larger cities like Chicago adopt community-wide Wi-Fi systems to allow all residents access to low-cost broadband, won't that pretty much kill BPL once and for all?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-060530wireless,1,3361882.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true

I only wish I could get something here. This slow-as-crap copper line is pissing me off. I can't get any of the broadband VOIP stuff. Can't use an IPod since download-able music is impossible. As it is right now, I have to use Earthlink's Accelerator to speed up things but all it really does is give fuzzy graphics as the webpage loads.

It would be **so** cool if some sort of national association for ham radio marketed itself as a helpful resource for people setting up wi-fi setups, you know, basic antenna theory. Even if it is 2.4 gHz, it's the same stuff we do as a hobby, and may serve a recruitment purpose.