"They'll back away or cut their investment," Balhoff predicted. "The city believes it has gained an agreement with EarthLink to achieve certain public policies for effectively no financial risk. That's what's been presented to the press, but the reality is that EarthLink would not do something like this unless the risk was mitigated."

Is the technology up to the task?

The two sides in this debate also disagree about whether current technology is up to the task. For the foreseeable future, these projects will use Wi-Fi mesh technology, which creates a single large network using a series of special Wi-Fi access points placed strategically around the city, mostly on utility poles.

"This technology is fundamentally unproven right now," Balhoff said. "We don't fully know how satisfactorily the mesh networks will be able to cover the territory. We just don't have sufficient information. Keep in mind, I come from the financial industry that has watched a lot of promising technologies fail."

One big question, Balhoff and other critics claim, is whether the plethora of Wi-Fi networks operated by homes and enterprises will interfere with the public networks. Vos was optimistic that there wouldn't be severe technical problems but agreed that there isn't yet enough experience with large networks to know for sure.