Is It Time To Play Taps For Muni WiFi?

Glenn has a recap of a post of the New York Times story that ran yesterday. He's right. Most of it is along the lines of his Economist piece some months back.

Basically a couple of foolish companies (they know who they are) didn't follow sage advice from broadband passengers who think and know what can work and what won't. Now we have Earthlink basically bailing on the market they told everyone would be their next big market.

My question is very simple. When is a contract not a contract? There are four parts to any agreement:

1) Agreement, offer and acceptance,

2) Mutuality and consideration,

3) Competent parties, and;

4) A legal objective.

What's amazing here is Earthlink, which contractually is obligated to build these networks, thinks they can just walk away and maybe pay some token "divorce fee."

Do you think any of the cities are going to try to protect their contractual rights?

Side note--It seems there may be some political opposition to the WiFi pro elected officials. Two guesses where the PAC type money came from.