Who's going to pay that $10M bill? How many people will be put out of work when the commercial service providers lose all their subscribers? How many businesses will be hurt because of the loss of competition? How long till the population considers high-speed internet access the newest entitlement?

This will be another very expensive 'free' government service.

Paying the upfront costs would probably be easy for the City, they could sell some bonds that would pay for the intial infrastructure set up and with any money left over could be used used for the initial maintenance until they have enough subscribers to cover the maintenace fees. Here in the Cleveland area that is referenced in the article it is public/private partnership with the private sector bearing the burden of most of the costs. As for the monitoring portion, I would guess it would no different than what we have now with most non wireless web facilities.

In a "geek cool" sort of way, it's great!

In a "real world" sort of way, some of the objections noted above are very relevant.

Living in France, I get subjected to advertisements that are not shown in the United States. One I've seen recently on CNN International is one that declares "We are working to make electric power declared a right." Well, I'm not sure I think that any "right" to electric power rises to that of life and liberty, even if it assists in the pursuit of happiness. In the end, it is a delicate balancing act between true actions towards the public welfare and disguised income redistribution programs. While I feel that those such as myself who have benefited greatly from our system of government should indeed pay a proportionately higher share of taxes, there is a limit, and free internet access to all does not meet the appropriate test as of yet.