WiFi Gains Strength in Cities

"These communications systems should not just be solely about profit margins . . . It's more about providing a public service," he said. "Look at what cities pay for landscaping and street lights. It's a shame this hasn't been made a higher priority."

Maryland's Allegany County built a network for the school system seven years ago, and it has since expanded to businesses, nonprofit groups, police departments, museums and government agencies. Cumberland, the county seat, now has service in its downtown area.

Conxx, the Cumberland-based company that runs the county's network, is constructing a city-owned network intended to provide free Internet service to low-income students in Harrisburg, Pa. The company is building a network in Ohio to provide automatic utility meter-reading to cut costs.

Mike Voll, vice president of sales for the firm, said interest in deploying city-run networks has spiked over the past few weeks as municipalities start cutting budgets.

Minneapolis, for example, partnered with a local Internet service provider to cover the city's 60 square miles. US Internet owns the network, which is made up of more than 3,000 hot spots, and the city's government is the largest customer, allowing workers to eliminate paper records and work remotely. Residents can subscribe to the network for $20 a month.

The city spends about $1.3 million a year for the service, said Joe Caldwell, US Internet's chief executive. He said he receives at least two calls every week from cities looking for help deploying new networks.

In the faltering economy, consumers are looking for cheaper alternatives for high-speed Internet service.

San Francisco, left in a lurch when a partnership with Google and Earthlink dissolved last year, has become a test site for another company. Meraki first installed an Internet connection in a volunteer's home and used rooftop repeaters to extend the signal across several blocks. More than a quarter of the city's neighborhoods now have strong coverage, with 160,000 people using the free service, said chief executive Sanjit Biswas.

Biswas hopes that, as more apartment buildings and coffee shops in town install their own hot spots, they will merge into a giant network that covers entire towns and suburbs.

"For a few thousand dollars, you can light up a business district and then scale to grow into other areas," he said.

Meinrath of the New America Foundation is experimenting with technologies in his Greenbelt neighborhood, trying to find the best equipment to expand the service to more households.

"While we're waiting for a single company to fund everything," he said, "the rest of the world is leaving us farther and farther behind."