Mu-Fi

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Municipal Wi-Fi (or Muni-Fi) is the idea of using thousands of overlapping Wi-Fi service zones to provide blanket coverage over a municipal area. Certain service providers use this to provide "free" basic high-speed wireless Internet access for homes, schools and virtually every place else inside the coverage area of a city, with premium services being offered at better prices than most other Internet providers.

Municipal Wi-Fi is most commonly attained by utilizing what is known as Wi-Fi Mesh or Metro Wi-Fi to effectively implement a self-forming, self-healing broadband network. Service providers such as Futura Technologies commonly work together with municipalities to deliver a comprehensive private / public partnership for offering municipal WiFi.

It is unclear whether, among the several projects announced to date, any have succeeded in fulfilling their initial goals. It also appears that only a few service providers have been successful in terms of achieving a return on their investment.