While it's debatable whether WiFi is the best technology for large scale municipal networks (Wi-Max anyone?), the rollout continues with a new free service in London. Online-4-free.com piggybacks on the already live network running along the River Thames and offers an advertising supported model: Users have to watch a short commercial every 15 minutes.
In that quarter hour you can pull down up to 100MB over the 256 kbps connection. The pay options are pretty reasonable, too, ranging up to £10 ($20) for a month, allowing 2GB of downloads at up to 500 kbps.
As more and more cell phones support WiFi, city wide networks start to get very useful. It's conceivable that Londoners could ditch the data plan when the UK gets the iPhone at the end of the year and instead use the mesh network. Although, with the rumors about the Euro-iPhone getting a 3G radio, they might not have to.
Product page [Online-4-free]
