I'm curious to see what sort of bandwidth "gigabit wifi" translates to in real life. In my experience with public wifi, it isn't a competitor to a wired ISP, its more of an alternative to 3G (and not as good as a 4G data connection). I'd be very surprised if a city government had found a way to make wifi feasible as a primary home or business internet connection when none of the companies working in the space couldn't.
For all the "American ISPs are terrible" rhetoric, they are profit driven and possibly evil but not incompetent. I feel like if NYC actually had a technology here that could put a home ISP out of business, the current ISPs would have bought it up first. NYC's wifi will be great for residents and tourists trying to check their email or do a quick Google search from their phone, but sustained gigabit connections for every client is way too good to be true.
>If NYC actually had a technology here that could put a home ISP out of business, the current ISPs would have bought it up first.
The capital allocation strategy for current ISPs has been to secure legislation prohibiting competition and sue threats out of existence. They might have invested in R&D as a hedge against that strategy not working, but that would seem to defeat the purpose.
For all the "American ISPs are terrible" rhetoric, they are profit driven and possibly evil but not incompetent. I feel like if NYC actually had a technology here that could put a home ISP out of business, the current ISPs would have bought it up first. NYC's wifi will be great for residents and tourists trying to check their email or do a quick Google search from their phone, but sustained gigabit connections for every client is way too good to be true.