Why isn’t the Internet free wherever we’d want it?

[Commentary] Why in 2014 is a neighborhood stoked to offer a service that for some has become as elemental as clean air, as sacrosanct as a universal human right?

“The technology really wasn’t ready until now,” says Harold Feld, senior vice president of Public Knowledge. “It took a while for the technology to get up to speed and work and for people to understand the value. And now people are ready for it, you’ve got an infrastructure that can support it, you’ve got institutions like libraries that are embedded in the community -- now we need to put all the pieces together.”

One problem: The market relies on consumers to purchase connectivity individually. In other words, blame AT&T or Verizon, if you’re willing to also blame capitalism as a whole. You could also blame government inertia and -- brace yourself for jargon -- the limited availability of unlicensed radio spectrum frequencies, the bands of airwaves that are open for use by anybody. “Whenever I think about putting in a new Wi-Fi hotspot, I want to look at the level of service and whether industry can do it,” says DC’s chief technology officer, Rob Mancini, whose office has rolled out more than 600 public Wi-Fi hotspots in the city over the years. “When government and industry can combine forces in a way that’s productive, this is where the American example shines.”