The Spanish paper El País has published today an interesting article by Sandro Pozzi about municipal wi-fis, which are a phenomenon that, at the moment, is only spread around the USA. According to the author, city councils promoting this type of infrastructure consider that this system will help to fill the digital gap and attract companies.

Linksys (Cisco’s property) has entered the Spanish market. After the success of its agreement with Fon to invade the market with ADSL routers, the company has sealed two agreements with Voz Telecom and PeopleCall so that they sell their VoIP terminals. The thing is that Synergy consultants estimates that by 2009 there will only be 59 users of this kind of phone services in the whole world.

The Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones, the Spanish Commission for the Telecommunications Market, has given Fon permission to create a “wireless community” where members can share their broadband. The document, that is available at Varsavsky’s blog, is very important since it legalises an Internet access “that is really equipped with a third ISP”, something that, according to certain sources, was ilegal. But the permission only allows Fon to offer Internet access, excluding voice or similar services.

Many mayors have in mind offering wi-fi access in their cities, especially in North America. What’s more, in some places, private companies have taken over city councils from this task.

“The Implications of WiMAX for competition and regulation”. This is the title of an extended report that the OECD has just released, even though it was written in June of 2005. This 60 pages long analysis devotes most of its paragraphs to deal with the conditions in which governments must authorise the use of appropriate frequencies. Spain is barely reflected, apparently, because the Spanish government didn’t provide de Organization with data.