Rio Rancho, NM - the premier digital city

We don't expect this to start cropping up in too many cities, given the resistance of the
telecom industry to municipal WiFi services, but we still think it's pretty impressive that the town of Rio Rancho, New Mexico has created a network offering voice, data and video that covers 60% of the city. Services include carrier-class voice-over-WiFi, which city officials say is a first for a metro area. Given that, we'll forgive city administrator Jim Palenick for engaging in extreme hyperbole by calling Rio Rancho "the premier digital city." After all, with a population of 53,000 and an area of just 72 square miles, we don't see Rio Rancho eclipsing wired towns like San Francisco or Seattle — or even
Philly, which has a few million more people and is doing a pretty good job of deploying its own muni WiFi net.