The city of Philadelphia last summer announced plans to offer wireless broadband service within its borders. Since then, other major cities such as Minneapolis and San Francisco have introduced proposals to do the same. But just a quickly as the movement for major metropolises to offer high-speed Internet to their citizens has mushroomed, so has the opposition to halt such plans in their tracks. A bevy of reports and state measures have been rolled out in recent months in an effort to stop local governments from providing broadband. Some have said cities and towns should not be in the Internet provider business, while others say such ventures run the risk of failure, and thus will leave taxpayers accountable to cover the costs. But while opponents may not agree on the exact reasons why they don't want municipal broadband, they have certainly offered numerous counterpunches to such efforts.
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