Thanks for the comment. I’m interested in raising the profile of the net-neutrality and digital divide issues, and this municipal wifi development provides an opportunity. Thanks too for the link to Catch da Flava. Too bad there’s no RSS feed!

nicely put – 2 things…

1) “A picture is presenting itself of a dormant fibre optic network that has the potential to access almost every telephone pole and/or lamp-post in Southern Ontario.”

Indeed. but i don’t think that will be for quite awhile. For example, I’ve noticed that news coverage of the planned wifi rollout keeps inching away from the original June intro, and is now hovering around Sept. I won’t speculate as to why this is, since there are myriad reasons (red tape, technical snafus, etc.) but I wouldn’t strike the possibility of some incumbent strong-arminng.

It’s refreshing to see the “public utility” debate finally hit Canada. It’s been years in the making over in the U.S. (but they’ve got bigger issues with broadband…)
But the timing couldn’t be better – the TPRP call for liberalization of the telecom market dovetails nicely with the recent Hydro announcement, and it’s heartening to see public interest over this hold steady.

2) “Any Regent Park bloggers out there?”
yep. http://focus.civiblog.org/blog