City-wide Wi-Fi boosted by iPhone

Demand for city-wide Wi-Fi and not just hot spots will be boosted by Apple's iPhone according to Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital. He gave his prognostication at the MuniWireless conference held early this week in Santa Clara, CA, as reported by CNet.

Apple has sold about 1.4 million iPhones through September 30th and plans to sell 10 million in 2008. Apple's iPhone uses Wi-Fi for high speed networking instead of 3G cell phone networks. Steve Jobs has repeatedly stated that Apple's strategy is to use Wi-Fi. Now other Wi-Fi enabled cell phones are hitting the market, the combined demand may finally be sufficient to make city-wide Wi-Fi economically feasible. [Dana Baggett & Bill Fox]