The New York Times (registration required) has an interesting article on municipal WiFi and the role of local government in jumpstarting broadband access.
One nugget buried in the second page of the article is that the City of New York got $23 million in return for access to 3000 lightpoles in the city. Wireless providers will place antennas and small equipment boxes on the lightpoles. This means the value of the lightpoles is an astounding $7,666! I suspect the leases are probably for ten years, which brings the value down to $767 per year, that that still illustrates the potential for a pro-active local government to self-finance the transport layer of a modern telecommunications infrastructure in a community.