City officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot.The ambitious plan, now under discussion, would involve placing thousands of small transmitters around the city -- probably atop lampposts. Each of these wireless hot spots would be capable of communicating with the Wi-Fi network cards that now come standard with many computers.
Once complete, the $10 million network would deliver broadband Internet almost anywhere radio waves can travel -- including poor neighborhoods where high-speed Internet access is now rare.