This paper examines the broadband connectivity options available in digital cities. It offers an overview of services provided by commercial operators, the public sector and by citizens themselves, arguing that shortcomings in existing fixed broadband and commercial mobile broadband services provide an opportunity for citizens to share their own wireless broadband connections. It explores Wi-Fi hotspot provider FON's approach to extending mobile broadband infrastructure by enabling shared connections within communities. The paper outlines some reasons why this specific user-generated approach to infrastructure provision has been unable to deliver highly robust broadband infrastructure, and discusses ways in which users and the public sector can be involved in developing new mobile infrastructures that will meet citizens ' needs. 1.

ABSTRACT Communications policies, like many other social policies, are founded on an ideal of democracy that connects the development of communication infrastructures with demo-cratic public spheres. This framing is a constructivist endeavour that takes place through lan-guage, institution, and infrastructure. Projects that aim to develop these capacities must grapple with the way such new media technologies are integrated into existing contexts or spaces, often using metaphors. This article analyzes how such metaphors are employed in the case of local wireless networking. Referring to empirical research on networks located in Montréal and Fred-ericton, Canada, the article critiques the narrow approach to democratization of communica-tion spaces inherent in networks of this type. This narrow focus is associated with metaphors used to describe a co-evolution of wireless technology and urban space. The article identifies that the design processes that shape these networks could benefit from a more radical democ-ratization associated with metaphors of recombination of space and technology.

Using a socio-technical theoretical lens, this paper delineates and defends the claim that access to broadband-enabled serious computer games is necessary to bridging the digital divide. Most of the research of videogames tends to focus on the potential psycho-behavioral impacts of this industry on society without regard for the unique social, cultural, and economic contexts of disenfranchised life. More specifically, little research examines how U.S. Latinos will access, consume, and use, in their daily lives, knowledge gained from serious massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) via broadband. This void presents us with a critical moment for this research to take place and crucial theoretical and methodological problems. Latinos do not simply use videogames for entertainment or distraction. To adequately analyze and evaluate access to ICT like videogames via broadband, we must consider the larger structural and institutional forces, notably the cultural and social framework, i.e. social community informatics and socialshaping theory. Such a multidimensional perspective would help reveal the structural factors associated with Latinos’ appropriation of videogames, and more interestingly how their experiences in the virtual world of videogames alters their perceptions of their real-life physical world.

Metaphors, models and communicative spaces: designing local wireless infrastructure