Is the Internet Like Water? Phone Lines? Cell Coverage?

In a flurry of excitement the past couple of years, more than 400 U.S. cities either built or seriously considered building a municipal WiFi network. Now, some reality is setting in, and cities are having a harder time finding a financial model that works.

It raises a fascinating question of how "critical" the Internet is to life in the twenty-first century. In the nineteenth century, cities built water and sewer systems, financing them with tax dollars. Clearly, cities could not have grown without those systems without creating a monstrous health crisis.

Yet around the same era, private companies built electrical grids in cities. Electricity would not be seen as critical to life until well into the twentieth century -- which led to government-funded projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Telephones? Not so critical that municipalities would build phone systems, but critical enough that by the 1930s government insisted on the idea of "universal service" -- affordable phone service for everyone. Cell phone service? There has never yet been any sense in the U.S. that it's critical enough for government to jump in and assure everyone can get it.

So where does wireless Internet fit? Critical service? Nice to have but not so important government should step in? Any thoughts?

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