Some reality entering the pointless muni-WiFi market

Nice to see that Earthlink is scaling back some of its municipal WiFi aspirations. I'm still a fervent believer that citywide WiFi is a completely useless concept, almost verging on a scam perpetrated by bored local council IT drones, who just want to do more exciting projects than another call centre or local tax accounting system. Unreliability of penetration of outdoor WiFi into buildings mean it's only useful for traffic wardens, CCTV cameras and about the 17 people globally who really need to use laptops in the street but not indoors.

Ironically I'm possibly one of the very few people who could ever see positive ROI on metro WiFi, as I live in central London, which has the world's fiercest traffic wardens, and could therefore probably generate an extra £2 in parking fine profit for every £1 wasted on local WiFi.