World Air Waves President Mark Bayliss tells me Harrisonburg was a great place to start this new internet because of the cooperative city government, JMU, and the city owns its power infrastructure. Bayliss says Harrisonburg will be the first city in the country to offer IPv6. Pretty soon Harrisonburg could be leading the way to the future

"Harrisonburg itself and with the networking built into this is going to basically be a showcase of what the Internet in the U.S. and the rest of the world will look like by 2010," says Mark Bayliss.

IPv6 is replacing the Internet we use now, which is called IPv4, and for city residents this means they can access the internet anywhere in Harrisonburg.

"It basically turns the city into your own private network that you can roam around through to parks, soccer games," says Bayliss.

But it isn't free. City residents will have to subscribe to IPv6. Bayliss says the price will be a little bit lower than the cost of DSL. Bayliss says wireless Internet is very secure and he hopes residents take advantage of this exclusive service.

"The more people we have on, the more we will learn, and develop, basically as the IPv6 and will help Virginia, the US in a technology lead against other countries that are moving forward in IPv6," says Bayliss.

Another advantage of wireless Internet is an obvious one, no wires! Bayliss says Internet users won't have to worry about excess wiring in their homes or poles knocking down cable lines causing the service to go down. In the next weeks, an office will open up downtown to start signing on people to the service.