The City of New York plans to deploy free Wi-Fi in a 95-city-block radius in Harlem. Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the plan on December 10. 

According to the press release, the project will be divided into three phases with completion scheduled for May 2014. The New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications and the Technology Development Corporation will oversee implementation. The City will partner with Sky-Packets. The Fuhrman Family Foundation is providing a generous donation to the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City to fund the first five years of the project.

From the Mayor's press release:

The Harlem WiFi network will provide a fast Internet connection from portable devices completely free of charge. The network will be available 24/7 in outdoors locations within the zone, with unlimited access. Enabling connectivity is a key component of increasing technology inclusion citywide. 

The network will offer free access to approximately 80,000 Harlem residents, including 13,000 living in public housing. We are curious to see how well the system works as there are so many Wi-Fi networks in that area already, they may interfere significantly with each other.

In a recent New York Daily New article, Scott Stringer wrote about the Big Apple's tech employment trends. He noted that more tech related positions now come to the city but those jobs still tend to elude women and people of color. He suggests looking at New York's own workforce and offering better science and technology training. How do they do that? Improve curriculum, of course, but:

Ultimately, the new workforce is only as strong as the infrastructure that supports it. Today, fast, reliable Internet access isn’t a luxury — it is a core utility of the modern age.

Stringer notes the antiquated copper throughout the city and looks south for a model:

Lafayette, La., constructed a municipal fiber network in 2005, linking fiber to every home and business. In Chattanooga, Tenn., the city worked with the public electric company to build a fiber network that not only helped modernize the energy grid, but also linked 150,000 homes and businesses to a gigabit connection that is 20 times faster than connections in much of New York City.

London-based Foreign Direct Investment recently recognized Lafayette as one of the top 10 Small American Cities of the Future, in part due to its fiber infrastructure. Chattanooga has received multiple recognitions for it innovative municipal network.