Citywide WiFi? *

Mayor Hahn just created a new telecom panel to study the possibility of providing wireless Internet access everywhere in Los Angeles. From the release:

Chairing Mayor Hahn's advisory panel will be Morley A. Winograd, executive director of the Center for Telecom Management at USC's Marshall School of Business. The panel will also include: Todd Richmond, USC Annenberg Center for Communication; Russell M. Kaurloto, USC Information Services Division; Rajit Gadh, Wireless Internet for the Mobile Enterprise Consortium; Curt Hessler, 101 Communications; and Rich Grimes, Wireless Capital and Management Services....

Wi-Fi service is currently available at several City of Los Angeles facilites, including Los Angeles International Airport, the Los Angeles Convention Center and the Braude Constituent Service Center in Van Nuys, which just became available this week. Wi-Fi service is currently being developed at Pershing Square in Downtown Los Angeles and along 1st Street in Little Tokyo...

The panel has been asked to report back by April.

* Noted after the fact: Councilman Eric Garcetti's office reminds me that the Bimini Slough Ecological Park in East Hollywood (on the site of the gone-but-not-forgotten Bimini Baths) offers public WiFi hot spots. It is, says the release, the first L.A. park with wireless Internet access.