As we have covered here extensively, the municipal WiFi movement continues to gather momentum with each passing day. Philadelphia is in the process of building their network (with deployment expected by the middle of next year), New Orleans just announced they will be building their own network (good for them!), and San Francisco and Minneapolis are evaluating bids and are expected to get things moving fairly soon. Let's also not forget Tempe, Arizona, which is about to become the country's first all-wireless city this coming February. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that we'll be reading about some sort of citywide wireless initiatives in Los Angeles, Boston, Miami, Dallas and points in between in the near future.

Of course, the big enchilada is (no surprise) New York City. Obviously, with a city this big and so embedded with a governmental bureaucracy, a citywide wireless network proposal that everyone can generally agree upon is going to take a while to sift through and get going. There are, of course, a myriad of logistical issues to work out—where antennas will be placed, who will manage the network, how much will it cost, etc.

According to the story we're linking to, there's a hearing scehduled for the middle of next week to discuss a bill to create a commission to advise Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city council on how the city can develop a wireless network. You can see already that there will be a number of layers and people that will be involved in the process, so from this viewpoint, it doesn't seem likely that Manhattan will have a wireless network up and running by the end of 2006.

However, city officials have to make sure that they don't fall too far behind in the growth of wireless, either. If Philly, San Francisco, and even New Orleans can get networks going in (relatively) short periods of time, then New York City has to follow suit and move forward. It really is to their advantage if they do.