Mayor Menino is scheduled to announce this afternoon that Boston will build a wireless network to provide cheap or even free wireless Internet access to users throughout the city, according to a Globe article. Boston will join the growing ranks of major cities (Philadelphia, San Francisco, etc) in the US and around the world that are planning or building citywide wireless networks.

Earlier this year, the city of Cambridge said it is working with MIT to build citywide WiFi. And Brookline announced in April the companies that will be building and running its city network.

Many of these cities cite all sorts of feel-good reasons for undertaking such big projects: economic development, improving city services (such as communications for first responders), and bridging the “digital divide” (providing free or low cost Internet access to poor neighborhoods underserved by the existing providers).

I’m a bit skeptical that free or low-cost wireless will bridge the “digital divide”…the city would need to provide free or cheap (but still relatively new) computers and free (or very low cost) computer classes to make WiFi use truly widespread in underserved neighborhoods.

But what might come out of this is a chance for smaller Internet service providers (ISP) and wireless networking startups to compete with the big guys (Verizon, Comcast and others). For example, a Newton-based company called Galaxy Internet Services will be providing the services on the Brookline network. The town apparently chose it over Earthlink.

Now, some would argue that having the city step in would make for unfair competition, but I would counter that having what amounts to a phone and cable duopoly is also a form of “unfair” competition. Maybe with more players in the ISP business, people like me (living in a North Cambridge apartment who only in the last couple of months had DSL made available on my phone line by Verizon) will have a few more affordable choices for getting high-speed Internet.

The big questions will be: will enough people use these city networks? Will they be able to compete with Verizon et al and make back their investments? If not, who gets to finance the debt? Tax payers?

This Boston announcement comes at a time when Menino needs some good news to announce. As much as I like WiFi, I think the city more urgently needs to hear Menino’s plan for reducing the number of shootings in the city.