Houston Getting Citywide Wi-Fi: How About Your Town?

Locals have been waiting and waiting and waiting for San Francisco (which regularly tops polls as "the most wired city in America") to get its citywide wireless network up and running... which they've been talking about since 2004. Well, the rest of the world is passing SF by... now Houston is the latest to announce it is getting citywide Wi-Fi, courtesy of Earthlink and a discounted rate plan. It's said that it would be the largest Wi-Fi network in the U.S. at 600 square miles, when it's completed in two years. (Though if you've ever lived in Houston, you know that 600 square miles is just the beginning of the metro area.)

Meanwhile, I just want the 50 or so square miles of SF to get coverage, but while I wait, here's some resources to help you find out if a town near you is considering or building a wireless network.

The most comprehensive source for information about who's building municipal wireless networks is easily this report at MuniWireless.com (PDF link, updated December 2006). You'll have to use the search function in Acrobat to find your city, as listings are not alphabetical. According to the report there are now 79 citywide wireless networks in the U.S. and a total of 312 either active or in the works.

If you want something a little more browseable, check out CNet's municipal broadband map (HTML link, updated April 2005),
which lets you click on a state and see the status of various networks. Unfortunately, a lot has changed in the last two years and the map is quite out of date.

How do things look in your neighborhood? And are you hopeful that a muni wireless project will soon get off the ground?