FREE TIMES CRUSADE FOR FREE DOWNTOWN INTERNET, PART 2: Okay, the new Free Times is out and we have the second installment (in City Chatter, but not on the FT web site) of David Eden's demand for City Hall to provide free wireless Internet service all over downtown. It seems that Tim Mueller says there'll be Wi-Fi on Mall C in September, and there's talk of a Wi-Fi corridor all along the Euclid Corridor from Public Square to CWRU. But this is not enough to make the Free Times Wi-Fi Warriors happy. It's just not up to the standard set by "other cities [that] are using Wi-Fi... to attract the entrepreneurial and creative classes..."

What other cities? Well, last week's editorial cited New York and Pittsburgh ("even Pittsburgh") as cities that "are making free wireless Internet access available in downtown areas, and other 'hot spots,' as part of an effort to attract visitors and companies to business districts". Here's where the language gets a little loose. Neither the City of New York nor the City of Pittsburgh is doing what the FT wants the City of Cleveland to do, i.e. deploy a free Wi-Fi grid throughout downtown at public expense.

In New York, there's a grassroots organization called NYCwireless creating voluntary hot spots throughout the boroughs (here's their system map). And in Pittsburgh, another nonprofit called Three Rivers Connect -- with much heavier corporate leadership, but still private -- has one small wireless network around its office downtown, pilot wi-fi projects on the North and East Sides and an experimental commercial network in the Oakland (University of Pittsburgh) area. The Oakland net is actually run by a company called Grok and costs $19 a month.

There is no indication on either website that their purpose is to "attract visitors and companies to business districts", let alone the "entrepreneurial and creative classes..." (Maybe they never met Richard Florida.) Three Rivers Connect does all kinds of things to promote IT and broadband throughout the Pittsburgh area. NYCwireless is one of the "wireless community networks" -- second generation FreeNets -- that've popped up all over the world; its mission statement says: NYCwireless promotes open wireless hotspots in public spaces throughout the New York region... NYCwireless intends to work with public and other nonprofit organizations to bring broadband wireless Internet to under-served communities.

Get that part about "underserved communities"? Read through the NYCwireless site and you get a sense of creative New Yorkers cooperating, with their own resources, to create something for the benefit of the whole community. Read the Free Times (not to mention a few local blogs) and you get a picture of a "Cleveland creative class" that's -- well, just kind of whiny. And in the case of its journalistic spokesnerds, a little loose with its facts.

Incidentally, the one city mentioned by the FT where the city government itself is sponsoring downtown WiFi as an ED initiative is Long Beach, CA. The "HotZone" covers four blocks. They also plan to WiFi their airport and their convention center. Sounds a lot like Cleveland, doesn't it? Read about it here.