Meraki Gives Free Wi-Fi to San Francisco
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Meraki, a wireless-networking startup, announced plans on Friday to deploy a citywide wireless network that will provide free Internet access for every neighborhood in San Francisco.
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San Franciscoâs mayor, Gavin Newsom, remains committed to a plan to roll out a citywide Wi-Fi network despite EarthLinkâs decision to bow out an agreement to build the system.
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A Silicon Valley startup wants to shake up the telecommunications industry with a $399 gizmo that provides free, unlimited domestic phone calls for homes with broadband Internet service.
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InfoWorld - The next generation of portable wireless Internet access is available in Seattle through a Clearwire trial service.
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The mayor says San Francisco plans to rapidly expand its free wireless Internet access program and will soon make free computers available at housing projects and community centers.
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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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The Earthlink-Google plan for free WiFi in San Francisco appears to be derailed -- for now.
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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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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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Microsoft and JiWire have struck a deal through which they will offer advertising on municipal Wi-Fi networks. The goal is to assess user willingness to tolerate advertising in return for free or subsidized access to Wi-Fi networks.
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JiWire will offer iPhone and iPod Touch users ad-supported Wi-Fi Internet access for free in select locations.
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(InfoWorld) - Two important votesÂ concerning San Francisco's plan for citywide Wi-Fi that were set for this week have been pushed back, delaying what may be life-or-death decisions on the controversial network. One vote of the city's fractious Board of Supervisors could force the project to undergo an environmental impact study. The other, by the board's Budget and Finance Committee, would reject the plan or send it on to the full body for final approval. Hanging in the balance is a proposal that was introduced by Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2004 and has become one of the major initiatives of his administration. As the votes were pushed back, Board President Aaron Peskin was preparing a set of amendments to theÂ contract hammered out by the city and EarthLinkÂ in January. Those changes aim to address concerns of some critics but may not win over vocal opponents on the board. San Francisco is one of many municipalities pursuing wireless networks to make Internet access more widely available, both to close the technology gap between richer and poorer residents and to boost the local economy. Its contract calls for EarthLink to offer 1MbpsÂ service for about $20 per month and GoogleÂ to offer a free service on the same network. Activists and some leaders in the city have raised alarms that echo worries in some other cities, such as how well the network will perform. They have also raised issues that are specific to San Francisco. For example, Google's proposed free service has come under particular fire for allegedly threatening users' privacy and being too slow, at 300Kbps. In one local twist, the San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna-Free Union (SNAFU) has appealed an April decision of the city's Planning Commission that exempted the network from environmental review. SNAFU, which has fought the placement of cellular base stations near schools, hospitals and some other sites, says Wi-Fi access points on light poles could harm residents' health. It will be up to the Board to force the review or let the exemption stand. At a pro-Wi-Fi rally outside City Hall on Tuesday, Newsom and other speakers called for quick approval of the project and scoffed at the environmental concerns. Newsom called the environmental question "a canard." Citywide Wi-Fi is critical to minority communities that lack Internet access and is being fought mostly by people who have it, speakers at the rally said. Leslie Rule, an educational technologist at local public broadcaster KQED, said she had read all of SNAFU's appeal of the Planning Department's decision. "They're worried about things that don't exist," she said. The rally brought together multiple groups from minority communities and drew about 100 protestors waving "Wi-Fi Now" signs. Peskin's proposed amendments, not yet spelled out in detail, include contract terms that would force EarthLink to serve all parts of the city and would boost the speed of the Google service to 500Kbps and protect users' privacy. They also would limit the term of network deal, under which the city would lease its light poles to EarthLink for placement of radios, to eight years and give the city the right to then buy the network. In general, the proposals are things the city tried to get during its own negotiations with EarthLink, said Brian Roberts, a senior policy analyst at the city's Department of Telecommunications & Information Services, which negotiated the deal with EarthLink. The city chose to try to conclude the talks and get the network built rather than press for every term it wanted, he said. "If Supervisor Peskin can get them, God bless him," Roberts said. Peskin said via e-mail on Tuesday that EarthLink had not yet responded to the proposed changes. If Peskin can work out terms he likes with EarthLink, the contract is likely to pass through the Budget and Finance Committee, on which he serves. But on the full board, some long-time opponents question the amendments and other members are also waiting to see more details. Â
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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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It rains a lot in Portland. So on days when the sun's rays make it all the way to the ground, who wouldn't want to take the city's new free Wi-Fi service for a spin?
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Fans of wireless internet access can now find their nearest wi-fi hotspot using their mobile phone.
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By Killion, Andy  On the rooftop of a large, pink apartment building in Golden Hill - known as the "pink palace" - SoCalFreeNet.org rigged up its first network node in August 2003; an antenna that would give the tenants free wireless Internet access.
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LONDON, Feb. 14  /PRNewswire/ -- Nokia Wi-Fi enabled phones users can benefit from free phone calls between mobiles thanks to facilitator barablu.