President Martinelli's free broadband WiFi Internet connections for Panama

The president's promise to the public was that virtually all Panamanians would get wireless broadband access for free. About half of the country's population (1.7 million people) would have access by October 10 2009, and much of the other half (another 600,000 people) would have it by January 18 2010.

Martinelli was inaugurated on July 1, Internet for All Universal Access National Network began right away, and on September 2 the contract bids of three contestants --- Liberty Technologies Corporation (Wipet), Cable & Wireless, and Fidanque Brothers (MobilNet) were opened. Liberty, a company founded in 2003 and run by CEO Moises Abadi and VP Salomon Zayat, had the highest price but won on "technical merit."

The difficulty in meeting the earlier claims soon became apparent as the 512 kilobytes per second speed would not be reached for most users and there would be "connection points" in "areas of greatest concentration” such as police stations, hospitals, public schools and government offices

Also, Mr. Martinelli wants to give the government control over what Internet sites people may or may not download, specific information about what things each person who uses the system reads.

This is leading to delays in the realization of this excellent initiative.