The Wall Street Journal announces today that Taipei, Taiwan gets the honor of being the first city to offer true citywide Wi-Fi to its residents.

The article explains the political and logistical challenges that made deployment difficult -- including a key point that Wi-Fi Net News picks up on: with only 6,000 of 60,000 registered users paying the $12-a-month fee so far, the system's viaibility has yet to be proven.

The WSJ article is full of lessons worth learning for the vast -- and growing -- number of U.S. cities that are working towards their own citywide Wi-Fi deployments...