Atlanta, where I live, has this funny habit of turning the public good into private perks.

Back in the 1990s the city transformed the public streets around Olympic visitors into the private good of one Munson Steed. We still haven't lived it down.

Now, with WiFi we're at it again, this time on behalf of one Jeff Levy (right, from the Atlanta Jewish Times newspaper.)

The result, the city thinks, is a great citywide WiFi network called FastPass. In fact what they're getting is the theft of the unlicensed spectrum on behalf of Levy and other, uh-hem, "entrepreneurs."

The idea is that the city will install WiFi hotspots in public buildings --- City Hall, the Airport, local colleges -- and the network will be accessible for, uh, whatever any other property holder attached to the network can hold you up for. Visitors to Georgia Tech, for instance, will pay $7.95/day. Those to City Hall will pay $4. God only knows what the Airport will nick people for.

This is supposed to be a public benefit? Ri-i-i-i-i-gh-gh-t. Actually what it does is extend the reach of paid Wi-Fi networks into the public sphere, through a citywide roaming agreement.

If someone had asked me, of course, I could have told them how to make this work for everyone.

Instead of turning WiFi into Levy's personal money tree, Atlanta could have invested the same $100,000 it's planning on spending here on a public WiMax network. This would have run from local fiber points to the public locations already mentioned, as well as the city's police stations. These nodes of "wireless fiber" would deliver backhaul, first, to the city to improve public safety, and then to anyone else who wanted to lease it at a reasonable rate. Atlanta would have gotten all its costs paid for for a modest investment. Instead it takes a claimed $5 million. (And how much of that will it actually see?)

Of course, if Atlanta did that BellSouth would have a fit and fall in it, just as Verizon did in Pennsylvania. WiMax, or 802.16, lets you bypass both Bells and cable companies, jumping the "last mile" between a fiber and an 802.11 network, and eliminating the bottleneck standing in the way of cheap broadband for everyone. The fact that no private interests are objecting to FastPass should be a Clue.

Instead, Atlanta bought the hype of WiFi and basically sold its air rights to Jeff Levy and a coalition of businesses who will turn what should be a public good into their private piggybank.

Atlanta, once the City Too Busy To Hate (satire alert on that last link), is now the City Too Greedy to Have A Clue.