Philadelphia this year is forging ahead with one of the most visible and politically charged wireless LAN projects in the country, despite recent efforts by telecom lobbyists to stymie it. The city's CIO, Dianah Neff, spoke with Network World Senior Editor John Cox about what will be involved in blanketing the 135 square miles of the city with a Wi-Fi mesh. Here's an edited transcript.

There was last-minute controversy around the passage of Pennsylvania House Bill 30, a reform of the state's telecom statutes. It included a provision, for which Verizon lobbied hard, that limits what cities and towns can do to create networks like the one you're talking about. Tell us about what happened.

We'd been aware of HB 30. It had been around for 18 months and had been dormant. All of a sudden, at the 11th hour of the lame duck legislative session, it's sent to the state senate, with no notification. We had about one week to mount a campaign. We mounted a grass-roots campaign to get the governor to veto it. He eventually signed it, but the city got a waiver out of that [Verizon agreed not to oppose the Wireless Philadelphia project]. We approached Verizon for a compromise, the governor put a little pressure on, and we worked it out.

What's your view on these kinds of restrictions that are being passed?

It's bad for the state and for the country. The U.S. has slipped from being third in the world in broadband deployment to being seventh. If you slow that, we'll continue to slip.

Why would that be a problem?

It's in the ability to deliver new services and products. Think about how the World Wide Web has impacted our way of doing business, our work and play. If it takes 15 years to roll out broadband fiber to the curb, the world will have passed us by. It costs an average of about $18 to pass a house with Wi-Fi. But it costs $7,800 to $10,000 for cable and $2,000 to $3,000 for fiber. You're able to uplift everyone with those lower wireless LAN costs.

So, what's the status of the Wireless Philadelphia project?

The executive committee [presented] its recommendations to the mayor [in December], and next we'll put out a request for proposals. . . . We'll make an award and start deployment in the summer.

Where did the idea for this citywide, broadband wireless access come from?

In April 2003, I presented to the mayor a briefing paper. He asked me to do a pilot, and Love Park [near City Hall] was selected for an outdoor wireless LAN mesh net. We deployed an 802.11b network in June 2004. It was wildly successful with virtually no advertising.It was expanded along Ben Franklin Parkway to Boathouse Row. All these are mostly public spaces. But there were also wireless LAN pilots funded by outside sources in other areas. One is the People's Emergency Center, which works with homeless and disadvantaged families in West Philadelphia. They created a small wireless project of about 40 homes. Cisco later funded the expansion to cover 100 homes.

What made you think that a citywide net was valid, economically and socially?

Part of my job is watching emerging technologies and to align them with the mayor's goals, and Wi-Fi is one of those targeted areas. With the 802.11 standards, the cost points and what Mayor [John] Street was trying to do with his Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, they all seemed to fit. The mayor appointed the stakeholders to an executive committee and asked us to put together a business plan.

Realistically, how many companies actually make a relocation or expansion decision based on whether a city has a wireless access network?

If you don't have this broadband infrastructure, you don't make the short list of locations the companies consider for moving or expanding. They look at questions like: Is your city known for being a technology city? Does it support innovation?

None of those questions individually are the reason why a business will move. But based on the input we got and the market studies we've seen, this is definitely a requirement.