Wireless in the wheatfields

Philadelphia recently made the news because the city government was pondering the establishment of a city-wide wireless internet access area. It seems that Walla Walla County, out in Washington State, has beaten them to the punch, though.

I wish some such option were available to me, rather than paying unGodly amounts of money to ComCast for a hardwired connection. Such networks might also help bring good-quality internet access to places like the family's Ancestral Home, where the telephone infrastructure is wobbly at best and cable television and other high-speed telecommunications connections are nonexistent.

Whether it should be done through governmental efforts, like the old Rural Electricity Administration, or through corporate efforts, though, might well prompt another debate over the proper place of government and free-market economics. Left to their own devices, will ISPs clamor for the chance to serve sparsely-populated areas?