Maybe it's a good thing that local governments are not offering Wifi. Never mind the initial infrastructure costs and maintenance costs -- what about the security costs? Experience tells me that the average internet user is blissfully unaware of security. Experience also tells me that many of the people who own/operate Wifi routers are also blissfully unaware of security. I suspect that those folks would use the free wifi because they don't have any other internet access would be even more unaware of security than even the average internet user. My bet is that free wifi would mean lots of stolen credit card numbers, lots of stolen usernames/passwords, and even more infected computers on botnets. Who knows, the security costs may even outweigh the infrastructure costs dollar-wise!