Using "mesh" networks that run on the Wi-Fi wireless standard, cities can deliver the Internet affordably to everyone within their boundaries. "We can cover a city for a fraction of the cost of the traditional providers," says Ron Sege of Tropos, a company that installs shoe-box-size devices that beam the Net from street lamps. This enables cities like Philadelphia to launch nonprofit efforts to make whole neighborhoods into hotspots: public spaces get free access, and citizens who use the service at home or around town are billed less than $20 a month. "We all have to compete in a knowledge economy," explains Dianah Neff, the city's chief information officer, who says the current providers focus excessively on the affluent.

The telecom and cable giants that sell broadband Internet have mobilized to stop or-ganizers like Neff. The likes of Verizon, SBC and Comcast are lobbying hard and donating big. They argue that taxpayer-funded competition makes the marketplace unfair (ironic, since those firms owe their dominance to government-granted monopolies). Then they claim that cities are too unsophisticated to pull off such projects (so why are they worried?). They fund think tanks that churn out white papers with titles like "Municipal Networks: The Wrong Solution." And they are racking up successes—14 states so far have passed laws that constrain localities in muni Wi-Fi efforts. In Pennsylvania, only a grass-roots protest from Philadelphians forced the legislature to exempt the city from its bill—but elsewhere in the state, cities and towns can't proceed on plans unless they offer the deal first to the phone companies, which can stall for years before deciding.