Public muni wi-fi networks are a bad idea. The density of hotspots required to cover an area is more than any council backed initiative can achieve. Just let people deploy WiMax - or use Woosh for goodness sake.

Municipal Wi-Fi has been promising for the best part of a decade.   Costs of providing it are now low enough that it makes sense.   Parnell already has a Kordia system using RoamAD technology with backhaul to the SkyTower [rumour has it just turned on a couple of days ago].   https://www.kordiametrowifi.com/plans.php

Woosh is not a good solution because people have swarms of Wi-Fi devices already in their possession and millions of people are buying them.   Few are buying Woosh and tourists certainly won't be toting Woosh around.  

When 802.11n is out, things will get better still.  

A few years ago, Wi-Fi was far too expensive to cover wide areas.   Now Wi-Fi electronics are cheap enough to spread them around like confetti and the trade-off between high horsepower wide area network basestations with civil engineered resource consent base station towers,  and low range low power public access Wi-Fi technology has shifted in favour of Wi-Fi though the wide area networks are also improving.  

Wi-Fi hotspots on the end of ADSL [as done by Zenbu] is the best and cheapest way of providing wireless service within a range of 200 metres.    Where there are lots of people, RoamAD systems make sense.  

People who say VoIP over Wi-Fi will be popular [if not storm the world] are not dreaming.   We use it daily now.   It's a primary communication tool [Skype].    And Skype continues to gain ground and improve functionality.   To communicate with other people, Skype is my preferred medium.  

Being mobile and having Skype available would be excellent too.  

Yes, it's early days for metropolitan Wi-Fi but Wi-Fi devices are selling like hot cakes, simply for hot spot services.   It's a synergistic feedback loop with the more the merrier.   

One way of increasing spectrum capacity is to put more into the signal [as done with CDMA].  Another is to make smaller base stations [like Wi-Fi] reusing spectrum every 100 metres or so and making them OFDM-based.  

Livedoor in Tokyo has built a giant Wi-Fi system covering inside the Yamanote Line.   Little NZ cities don't have such numbers so making Wi-Fi economic is more tricky for downtown areas.   But Telecom and Vodafone need the competition [their customers do if they don't].   

Mqurice