Eric Richardson [Flickr]

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Mayor Villaraigosa held a press conference this afternoon at 7+Fig announcing the LA WiFi Initiative, billed as the nation's largest. The Mayor wants to see WiFi citywide by the end of 2009, with buildout starting in 2008.

First, though, the City is putting together a working team to "engage the private sector" (to quote the press release) and figure out the plan's specifics. The Mayor emphasized that this team wasn't a committee that would return a paper only to have it filed away and not enacted: they are to return back with a plan ready to be put into place.

The Mayor brought to the press conference a group of students from Oscar de la Hoya Animo Charter School. Two seniors spoke on how more available access to the Internet would have better helped them prepare for college.

My wife actually teaches at ODLH, and her classroom has a dozen or so computers in it. Every day after school many students want to come in and use those computers to type papers or work on homework. While WiFi itself won't get them computers to work on, having widely available access takes care of one important piece of the puzzle.

Photos I took of the press conference can be found here.