Using Advertising to Fund Free Muni WiFi

I gave a presentation this morning at the Lafayette TechSouth Conference and had the opportunity to listen to several other presentations from Tropos, EarthLink, and Cisco. We all know that every city on the US has looked at deploying city wide WiFi systems to provide wireless broadband internet access across the city. The business model is very hard to get ISP's to privately fund these type of networks. The network that Google is building in Mountainview CA will use advertising sponsorship to fund the ongoing operating cost as well as the initial infrastructure cost to deploying a Muni WiFi system is really a very old concept. Long before cable TV networks the main ABC, CBS, and NBC networks relied on advertising to generate revenue to fund ongoing operations so why not have a free and open WiFi network that provides advertising.