Detroit City Council Introducing Skype at Meetings

The City of Detroit has announced plans to allow citizens to speak at city council meetings via Skype.
According to the Detroit Free Press, "in a city of 750,000 people, fewer than a dozen residents typically speak out during the comment period." This is such a tiny fraction, and the new Skype solution could hopefully increase the number of citizens speaking at City Council meetings. As Council President Charles Pugh pointed out, it can be tough for residents of such a large area to attend city council meetings. In a city with lacking public transportation, the time cost of attending a meeting downtown is high. Residents might be able to take twenty minutes out of their work day to Skype into city council, even if they can't take an hour and a half to attend a meeting in person. Additionally, Pugh specifically mentions the cost of parking as a deterrent for those who can drive to the meetings. Skype solves this problem.
This is a great effort on the part of the city government of Detroit. Any efforts to increase civic participation are a step in the right direction. Still, it remains to be seen whether inconvenience is the main reason people haven't been attending council meetings.
One potential issue is the general unreliability of Skype. As anyone who's used the service regularly knows, internet problems can cause words or entire sentences to be lost or garbled, distorting the speaker's meaning and frustrating both parties. The city will have to be clear as to what its goals for the service are. Flawless functioning is unrealistic at this point, but increasing civic participation by a stated percentage or number of people is very realistic. It will be interesting to see if the commitment to increased accessibility survives a potentially frustrating trial-and-error process to perfect the system.
If you live elsewhere, has your city tried something like this? How did it work?
If you live in Detroit, are you going to use the new Skype system?
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Detroit City Council to use Skype for public comment [Detroit Free Press]