The Philadelphia network was in the middle of this decade with the vision of blanketing the city with wireless Internet access. The city planned the network in part to make sure low-income residents would have some form of Internet access. Many other U.S. cities followed Philadelphia's lead with similar plans, which EarthLink offered to carry out, but soon the ISP pulled out of the business. The Philadelphia network, which covered about 75 percent of the city, was from demolition in 2008 when EarthLink sold it to Network Acquisition Co. (NAC), a local company.

Pending city council approval, Philadelphia will buy the network for US$2 million and primarily use it for city operations, said city spokesman Douglas Oliver. Over the next five years, the city would invest about $17 million to add public-safety radios to the infrastructure and finish building it out to cover the whole city. By that time, the investments will have more than paid off in savings from more efficient city operations, said Chief Technology Officer Allan Frank. For example, workers can be more productive by filing reports from the field instead of going back to the office.

Free public Internet access will be available in some public spaces, and eventually, the city may bring in revenue through partnerships with government agencies and educational institutions, Oliver said. But the plan to use Wi-Fi to democratize the Internet has gone by the wayside.

"The digital divide is still real, and it is still something that needs to be addressed. Perhaps that was not the model to address it, but it makes the cause no less worthy," Oliver said.

NAC will be selling the network to Philadelphia for about the same price it paid to EarthLink. To pay for it, the city will tap into a capital fund for public safety as well as a federal Department of Homeland Security grant for installing security cameras around the city. Those cameras will be connected via Wi-Fi. Building a similar network from scratch would cost about $30 million, the city estimated.