Dear Residents of Corona, California

Congratulations! You'll be glad to know that you'll soon get to surf the web for free. Your City Council has approved a project where Metro-Fi will install over 500 wireless hotspots throughout the city, on streetlight poles. Even better, your city will get $18,000 annually from Metro-Fi for the privilege of providing free broadband access.

Now corona is part of the wireless city league. I'm sure Temecula, Riverside, Long Beach, Philadelphia, San Francisco (courtesy of Google) will welcome your city warmly. Don't fret if your smartphone or PDA has no Wi-Fi capabilities. There are a lot of people offering Wi-Fi adapters for your device, like the Socket P300 we featured a few days ago.

You'll have to wait for about 18 months or so though for the entire city to be covered, but it's a gradual roll-out; some of your neighborhoods will gain wireless access once installation starts.

Yes, I understand you might not want pesky advertisements on the top of your screens, but Metro-Fi has to find some way to recoup its costs. You can decide to pay $19.95 if you want the ads to go away.

Again, congratulations on your good fortune. Excuses about no internet access to explain a failure to read The Smart PDA are now moot. We'll have all the info you need to maximize your mobile freedom. ;-)

PS: I can imagine the exciting prospect of finally having porn-on-demand. But please, there's a lot more on the Internet, you know.

Thanks to Muni Wireless for the heads-up.