A front-page story in this Sunday’s Gainesville Sun says Gainesville is considering a city-wide wireless network. Wireless access would be provided from a network based on the city’s traffic lights, and would also serve as a way to synchronize those lights without installing fiber. Currently, public wifi is provided downtown by the Digital Downtown project, which is managed by Alachua County and funded by donations.

“Is wireless Net access citywide on horizon?,” by Jeff Adelson, Gainesville Sun, August 6, 2006.

Ubiquitous wireless Internet access will be “the fundamental infrastructure of the 21st century,” Commissioner Ed Braddy said. Braddy compared the impact publicly accessible wireless Internet will have on future commerce to the changes brought by the federal highway system 50 years ago.

“The question is why - in a university town - we don’t yet have a Wi-Fi cloud that covers the entire community,” he said. “That’s where we need to go.”