A good column by Lawrence Lessig on a problem with Wi-Fi access in the U.S. In short, lobbyists are spending money to convince lawmakers to prevent municipal governments from competing with broadband providers instead of actually providing broadband. The really eye-opening stat in the piece is that our country is 13th in broadband deployment. Given how long it took me to get broadband initially, I can believe it.
When the free market is clearly not working in an area, government stepping in may not be a bad idea.