For those following the municipal wi-fi debate...

The various phone companies want to have more control over what passes over their phone lines. In essence they want content providers (like yahoo, google, etc) to pay them (the phone company), for the privilege of giving them preferential network access. Think of it as a commuter lane on the freeway. You know the ones where if you buy a card in advance you can just fly through the toll booth. Yep, the phone companies want a piece of the action. It is not being planned as a favor to you, the customer.

Google does something similer in that companies can pay google to give their sites a preferential search response.

The New York Times did a nice piece on this 1/15/06: Hey, Baby Bells: Information Still Wants to Be Free.

I personally see it as a bad thing and another incentive to promote municipal wi-fi.