A recent CNET story asserts that small towns may have to wait a while -- a very long while -- before vendors get around to implementing municipal wireless projects with them. While cities like San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia have announced major partnerships with the likes of Earthlink and Google to provide free or low cost wireless access to their citizens, smaller towns aren't able to attract the attention of the vendors.

Cole Reinwald, vice president of product strategy and marketing for Earthlink Municipal Networks says that right now:

"We should be looking at cities with densities of about 2,500 people per square mile. As tech costs drop, we'll be able to bring that number down."

Given that number, many communities may be left behind.  This means smaller towns and rural communities will need to figure out how to build and implement wireless infrastructure in some other way. But is that right?

I'm concerned about the issue of Municipal Wireless because I believe that Internet access is a vital and necessary service, like phone service or roads. It's something to which we all need access, to support economies, social networks, even our health and well being. People who have easy access to the Internet have a tremendous advantage over those who don't, and municipal wireless projects have the potential to be the great equalizer because there is no expensive cable to run, no city streets to dig up, in order to implement them.

But all that is moot if smaller towns and rural communities can't partner with companies to deliver, or come up with creative strategies of their own. Should ISPs and TelCos be required to deliver Internet access in the same way TelCos must deliver telephone service to everyone?