Copycat

As usual, St. Paul is following Minneapolis’ lead and is considering the establishment of a city-wide wireless broadband network. I’m waiting for the cable and telco companies to start making some noise about these public efforts to provide broadband access. I heard one of St. Paul’s councilmen on the radio today and he was comparing broadband access to other public projects like roads and bridges. When you consider that the Internet as we know it only began taking off a decade ago, it’s a tremendous leap for government officials to now perceive it as a public utility.