No, I still like the Windy City.

Following in the footsteps of Philadelphia, the City of Chicago is pushing through a new ordinance to build a municipal Wireless LAN. It remains to be seen whether it would be free, like Philly, or pay-per-use. Being a long-time citizen of this great city, I suspect the latter.

The city already offers free Wi-Fi access at all Chicago Public Library branches, so this could be considered the next logical step. However, politics being politics, and lobbyists being lobbyists, passing the ordinance does not make it a sure thing.

SBC has a lot of political capital (and the other kind of capital) to bring to the battleground. You can be sure that incumbent broadband providers won’t savor the idea of having the city as a competitor. Lawyers and lobbyists will make a bundle of money on both sides, you can bet on that.

In a manner of speaking, you can already go to most of the trendy neighborhoods and “borrow” a signal from somebody who hasn’t locked down their router (many folks don’t). Still, it’s a fabulous idea to think of going virtually anywhere in the city and having a signal. Navy Pier, Millennium Park (where I already got signals from somewhere), etc.

I will be following this story closely… for a lot of reasons. I’ll be playing poker with a powerful alderman in a couple of weeks, so maybe I can get some fresh insights.