Wireless San Francisco
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Reuters has a story  about Gavin Newsom finally getting wifi and wanting to hookup San Francisco:  "SAN FRANCISCO  - San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has set a goal of providing free wireless Internet activity in his city that sees itself as a vanguard of the Internet revolution."  ""We will not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free wireless Internet service," he said in his annual state of the city address on Thursday. "These technologies will connect our residents to the skills and the jobs of the new economy."  The issue I have is that I'm not sure my tax dollars need to pay for this.  I'm also pretty sure that the city will screw it up.  Why not just do this.  Allow ...
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San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom set a goal on Thursday of providing free wireless Internet activity in his city that sees itself as a vanguard of the Internet revolution.
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By Kris Hundley, St. Petersburg Times, Fla.  Sep. 7--On the day St. Petersburg took a giant step toward eventually  providing citywide wireless Internet capability, a familiar face said it was  already providing wi-fi capability, at least in parts of the city.
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With EarthLink no longer pushing into the municipal Wi-Fi business, the wireless network it previously wanted to build in San Francisco likely won't happen.
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The sun came out for EarthLinks&#39; Philadelphia Wi-Fi network on Thursday even as prospects for its San Francisco project remain shrouded in fog.
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(InfoWorld) - Google and EarthLink's Wi-Fi contract with San Francisco would have a renewable four-year term and would require a proof-of-concept deployment before the full network is rolled out, if progress so far in negotiations holds firm, according to the city. TheÂ companies were chosenÂ earlier this year to build and operate a citywide Wi-Fi network with both free and faster paid services. San Francisco officials are now negotiating with them on the exact terms of the relationship, in which the vendors will bear the cost of the network while the city will provide the use of light poles and other city assets for deploying it. The city has said it expects the network to go live in 2007. The parties have made progress in the talks, which began in May, said Brian Roberts, a senior policy analyst for the city's Department of Telecommunications and Information Services. On Friday afternoon, he defended that progress to the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) when asked about an article last week in the San Francisco Chronicle in which a Google executive said little had been decided. LAFCO is a county agency that provides oversight of cable TV franchises and other issues. Nothing is definite until the entire contract is agreed upon, Roberts said, but he highlighted some areas where he said there is accord so far. As negotiations stand now, Google and EarthLink would have a contract to provide the wireless broadband service for four years. At the end of that term, the city could shut down the arrangement without having to show a specific cause, he said. It could also demand the technology be upgraded as a condition for renewing the deal. The term could then be renewed as many as three times, for a total period of 16 years. The vendors first would have to roll out a test network, which would cover about two square miles, for as long as six months to show whether their technology would really work, Roberts said. The talks also have addressed some of theÂ thorny privacy issuesÂ that have generated criticism he said. Google and EarthLink would be able to collect information about a user's whereabouts while using the network, but that user would be able to opt out of giving that information, Roberts said. If they collect the information, the vendors could only keep the data for 60 days. During that time, they couldn't share information about specific users except in certain cases in which it's sought by law enforcement or courts. In exchange for the use of its rights of way, San Francisco is seeking 5 percent of gross revenue from the network, Roberts said. It also will seek a fee for use of city-owned light poles. That money would help to support city initiatives to narrow the digital divide between rich and poor residents. Negotiators haven't reached agreement on those financial terms, he said. Members of LAFCO were skeptical about some aspects of the talks so far, including the city's revenue demands. San Francisco Supervisor Jake McGoldrick said he feared the city was undervaluing the city's assets by seeking just 5 percent of revenue. Roberts said that percentage would be very competitive with what other U.S. cities have gotten.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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San Francisco&#39;s mayor Thursday said he wants to see his city provide free Wi-Fi service to everyone. In his state of the city address, Mayor Gavin Newsom promised to put Wi-Fi within reach of the masses.
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By DAVID B. CARUSO    PHILADELPHIA  -- For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot...
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By Justin Buehler, Victoria Advocate, Texas  Jun. 4--BAY CITY -- The entire city of Bay City is going Wi-Fi.
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Wireless networking startup Meraki plans to deliver free wireless Internet access across San Francisco by the end of the year.
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Every day, cubicle-dwellers get up from their desks and walk to their nearest windows in search of a strong enough signal to make or answer a cell-phone call. Cathy Zatloukal thinks her in-building wireless infrastructure company, MobileAccess Networks, can save them the trip.
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Barcelona will host the wireless industry this week at the 3GSM World Congress. Look for flashy cell phones, faster networks and small-screen entertainment. By the Associated Press.
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Mobility will take center stage this week as San Francisco plays host to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association's (CTIA) Wireless I.T. & Entertainment 2004 fall conference.
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High-speed Wi-Fi Internet access has been tested successfully on the BART subway in the Bay Area.
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Since April, baseball fans attending San Francisco Giants home games at SBC Park have enjoyed wireless internet access if they bring a portable computer with them.
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Meat wagons hitched to wireless bandwagon
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Meraki Networks&#39; plan to cover San Francisco with free Wi-Fi, with residents&#39; help, could be a way around the political and business barriers some municipal wireless projects have run into.The startup, partly funded by Google, believes it will succeed&#160;where EarthLink and Google did not: Building Wi-Fi access throughout San Francisco at no cost to the city. It expects to finish by year&#39;s end, filling the whole city with 1Mbps coverage.The catch is that Meraki is footing the whole bill on this project so that&#160;it can learn how to roll out such networks for profit elsewhere. The good news, if the plan works, is that it could do so for less than $5 million, lower than the cost many other municipal wireless projects have run into. That&#39;s partly because of intelligence in access points and software, making the network more robust with fewer nodes, according to Meraki spokeswoman Erika Shaffer.Meraki will build the backbone of its network with solar-powered rooftop access points and fill out its coverage with smaller repeaters to sit in windows or on balconies. Both will be designed and built by Meraki and provided free to residents and businesses that agree to house the gear on their property in return for better coverage. All the nodes will be meshed, so Meraki won&#39;t have to get wired broadband links everywhere its access points go.The idea has potential in developing countries with little broadband, where Meraki sees its biggest market, but also in highly wired cities such as San Francisco, analysts said.A key advantage is that by asking users instead of the city for mounting rights for its gear, Meraki will bypass the rancorous political fights over contract terms like the one that slowed down EarthLink&#39;s initiative last year. But seeking volunteers also makes sure that however fully Meraki has actually covered the city by the end of the year, it is pretty sure to have coverage where people actually want it.&quot;You know exactly where your coverage needs to be, because someone just asked you for a repeater,&quot; said IDC analyst Godfrey Chua.Meraki believes it won&#39;t have any trouble getting people to host repeaters in their homes, based on its existing test networks in parts of San Francisco, Shaffer said. There are about 500 repeaters today, and about 40,000 people have used the network, she said.Another problem that would seem to solve itself, assuming the network and distribution system run smoothly, is the difficult issue of indoor coverage, said Craig Settles, an independent municipal network analyst at Successful.com. EarthLink&#39;s network was to be built largely on streetlights and electricity poles, which are well suited to mobile outdoor coverage, but not so good for providing home broadband to residents who can&#39;t afford wired alternatives, Settles said. Meraki&#39;s small repeaters are designed for indoor coverage in the home where they&#39;re located as well as to flesh out the whole network.On the San Francisco network, which Meraki will treat as a research and development cost, the company will test advertising as a possible revenue source for future deployments. When it approaches service providers that want to charge for access, it will also offer a billing system. Meraki has trials going on today with carriers in developing countries, Shaffer said.In places where most people don&#39;t yet have broadband, Meraki&#39;s approach could be an attractive low-cost alternative, analysts said. However, WiMax, which requires far fewer base stations than Wi-Fi because it has a longer range, also has relatively low costs and is already a competitor in those markets, Chua said.&quot;I doubt that Wi-Fi would be the dominant access medium in emerging markets,&quot; Chua said.