City to flip switch on new Wi-Fi

With the click of a mouse at 11 a.m. today, city officials will turn on the first section of a Wi-Fi corridor along South Main Street, from Market to Exchange streets, enabling nearby computer users equipped with wireless adapters to access the Internet for free.

The half-mile stretch of South Main Street is the first phase of a project that aims to provide free broadband Internet service to anyone in about a nine-square-mile area downtown. The $2.2 million project, called Connect Akron, is a partnership between the city of Akron and OneCommunity, the nonprofit group that is installing the equipment...