Wired has a story about the struggles of several municipal Wi-Fi deployments. Turns out that good coverage requires double the number of access points than planned, and that consumer subscriptons were an order of magnitude less than anticipated (1-2% instead of 10-25%).
The article holds out a few rays of hope: 802.11s for mesh deployments in residential areas, concentrate on high-traffic areas rather than trying to replace fixed broadband access, get the cities to become “anchor tenants.”
On the other hand, there still seem to be plenty of lower profile metro Wi-Fi deployments that are doing OK.