The Sacramento Bee, Calif., Plugged In Column: Free Wi-Fi for Low-Income Sites
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By Clint Swett, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.  Jun. 21--Two low-income housing communities in Sacramento will offer their residents free Wi-Fi Internet access and computers later this fall.
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But does it fit the bill for muni Wi-Fi? While the promise of free-for-all municipal Wi-Fi networks remains on the horizon for most â and a Googly mess for others â mesh wireless, the technology that utopians fancy will float us away on a cloud of education, is making practical progress.â¦
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Chicago Public Library Commissioner Mary Dempsey rolled out free wireless Internet connections at the main Harold Washington Library Center and 76 branches.
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SBC Communications Inc. SBC.N said  on Monday it would offer access to its network of 3,900 public  Wi-Fi Internet access points to its high-speed Internet  subscribers for $1.99 per month.
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(InfoWorld) - The sun came out for EarthLink's Philadelphia Wi-Fi network on Thursday even as prospects forÂ its San Francisco projectÂ remain shrouded in fog. Wireless Philadelphia, a nonprofit group formed by the city of Philadelphia, has approved the 15-square-mile Wi-Fi test network EarthLink built, opening the door for the operator to finish building out a 135-square-mile network covering the city. The approval comes just a month afterÂ EarthLink announced it would scale back its city Wi-Fi initiative, focusing on existing and large cities for the rest of the year. The company has seven or eight cities under contract now and is negotiating with five more, Vice President of Product Strategy and Marketing Cole Reinwand said last week. It decided to stagger its Wi-Fi expansion to conserve resources, he said. Residents can already use the 15-square-mile network in Philadelphia. The full network is expected to be complete in the third quarter. EarthLink is financing, building, and managing the network and will share revenue with Wireless Philadelphia, which will offer cut-rate access for low-income people. For six months, customers of a 1MbpsÂ service will pay an introductory rate of $6.95 per month, which bumps up to $19.95 thereafter. A faster 3Mbps service is available for $9.95 for the first six months and $21.95 after that. City parks will have free access, and low-income residents can sign up for service at $9.95 per month, before promotions. Customers can also pay for service on an hourly, daily or three-day basis. The Philadelphia Wi-Fi network is notable because when announced, it set off a storm of controversy that resulted in a Pennsylvania law requiring municipalities to receive approval from incumbent telecommunications operators before building Wi-Fi networks. The law was created after incumbents complained that by financing Wi-Fi networks, cities were building networks that would compete with their businesses. The San Francisco project, which has drawn attention partly because of Google's planned involvement as provider of a free citywide service, has run into fierce opposition from activists as well as some local elected officials. The proposed contract is scheduled for a vote by the city and county's board of supervisors in July.
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(InfoWorld) - San Francisco is going to kick the tires of an alternative to theÂ citywide Wi-Fi planÂ from EarthLink and Google. The budget analyst of the City and County of San Francisco agreed on Monday to study to financial feasibility of a wireless network paid for and owned by the city. The agency expects to finish its report by December, a representative said at a meeting Monday of the Board of Supervisors' Government Audit and Oversight Committee. The city's Wi-Fi plan and the process of developing it has come under fire from several quarters, not least from some members of the Board of Supervisors. Supervisor Jake McGoldrick formally requested the feasibility study after criticizing the way in which the administration of Mayor Gavin Newsom settled on theÂ EarthLink-Google plan. It calls for a network to be built at no cost to the city and owned by the two service providers. "It really got rammed and jammed and fast-tracked," McGoldrick said in April. If the city owned the network, he believes it would have more control overÂ issues such as user privacyÂ and prompt upgrading of the technology. The analyst's plan to deliver the report by December satisfied McGoldrick, who talked with representatives of the agency at Monday's meeting. The city also expects to wrap up its negotiations with EarthLink and Google in early December, said Brian Roberts, a senior policy analyst for the city's Department of Telecommunications and Information Services. The department has no position on the plan for the feasibility study, he said: The budget analyst's report will give the supervisors more information to decide whether to go with the EarthLink-Google deal, he said. Also Monday, a nonprofit organization said a city-owned network would pay for itself in just over four years. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) released the results of a feasibility study report that was sought by Media Alliance, an Oakland, California, group that has pushed for broader access to technology. ILSR envisioned San Francisco building the network for an initial capital investment of about $10 million, to be repaid over five years from services revenue. The city would create a nonprofit body to sell access to the network to service providers wholesale. Upgrades would cost about $9 million over ten years, the group said. The plan is similar to onesÂ advocated in some other cities, such as that of the Boston Wireless Task Force. ILSR said its estimates, which in part assume that 10 percent of households and businesses would become paid subscribers at about $15 per month, were conservative. A better plan would be for the city to expand its current 43-mile fiber network to eventually reach all homes, while deploying wireless in certain areas in the meantime, ILSR said. Fiber costs more to deploy but less to maintain. The city didn't provide enough information for a complete analysis of this plan, ILSR said.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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What would Benjamin Franklin say? Philadelphia plans citywide free Wi-Fi Internet access for computer users.
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A local startup is selling technology to enable the average person to set up and manage their own WiFi wireless network. BeeTelecom Inc.
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Philadelphia has finished testing  its wireless Internet project, setting the stage for America's  biggest citywide Wi-Fi network that will also offer access to  low-income households, officials said on Thursday.
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arvind s. grover writes &quot;San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom stated yesterday in his state of the city address that every San Francisco resident will have free wireless internet access.
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Manchester City Council plans free wi-fi zone covering more than 400 square miles.
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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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Ambitious plans for big Wi-Fi networks to provide free or low-cost wireless Internet access are being abandoned or scaled back by US cities as the economics of the deals turn out to be more challenging than expected.
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The nation's largest municipal Wi-Fi cloud will blanket Philadelphia by the summer of 2006 &#151; with Internet access free in public parks and steeply discounted for low-income residents.
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Plus: San Francisco mayor vows to bring Wi-Fi to the city, free computers to housing projects.
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For all the buzz about municipal Wi-Fi networks, getting a system off the ground can be an arduous process mired in a tangle of politics and conflicting needs and laws, experts say.
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AT&amp;T Inc. announced Monday that subscribers to its higher speed broadband services will have free access to its Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the country.