Suspense mounts for San Francisco Wi-Fi plan
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Two important votes 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.
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By Clint Swett, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.  Jun. 18--After more than a year of fits and starts, Sacramento is on the verge of approving a system that would blanket the city with free and paid wireless Internet coverage for both residents and visitors.
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California passes Wi-Fi user protection bill; AT&T eyes municipal deals. Plus: The mobile Internet--are we there yet?
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An ambitious plan to equip Silicon Valley with wireless public broadband services is proceeding with great hopes but many challenges.The Wireless Silicon Valley project was the subject of a presentation at the MuniWireless conference in Santa Clara, Calif. on Tuesday afternoon. Expected to cost $100 million to $150 million, Wireless Silicon Valley involves developing an architecture covering 1,500 square miles. It would be used by around 40 cities in Silicon Valley, each of which has contributed $2,500 to seed the effort. While there are no officially defined boundaries, Silicon Valley is generally considered to be a span of California cities in the San Francisco Bay Area, including San Jose.The project's vision involves connecting anyone, anywhere, involving any device, said Seth Fearey, project lead for Wireless Silicon Valley and vice president of Joint Venture, Silicon Valley Network."We're going to move beyond the model of laptops connecting the Internet doing e-mail and the Web. We want to connect devices and things," Fearey said.The network would only function outdoors and provide capabilities ranging from citizen access to the Internet to provision of public services. Users would be able to maintain a connection if they linked up in Daly City, just south of San Francisco, and traveled to Gilroy 71 miles from San Francisco.Economic development is the top priority of Wireless Silicon Valley, with the idea being to connect small businesses, attract businesses, and make Silicon Valley an exciting place to be."People coming here for conventions would spend more money if they knew where to go," such as being able to find movie theaters via wireless access, said Fearey."We can use this network to help give them that information," he said.Benefits of the plan are to make a network that is much more useful and leverages economies of scale, one that deploys multiple technologies together, provides more revenue opportunities, and accommodates government staff.Challenges, however, include finding an owner/operator and operating on an unproven business model. Also, the network has a high cost to build and the needs of low-revenue areas must be balanced with those of high-revenue areas. The network also takes time to deploy."We're breaking new ground here," said Fearey. Investors want to see how the network will work and are struggling to determine how they will make moneyThe cities participating in the program are quite small, except for San Jose, Fearey said. "This is a big, big challenge," financially, he said.A request for proposal was issued, resulting in companies such as IBM and Cisco offering to provide equipment and Azulstar to operate the network. These vendors comprise the Metro Connect team that intends to provide the network infrastructure, own and operate it, and sell services. Azulstar, however, was not able to raise money to get the project moving. Now, additional operators are being sought.?The goal with the network is create lots of opportunities for the operator of the network to make money not just from consumer subscriptions and adverting but also from other services such as provision of point-to-point advertising.A variety of applications has been suggested, ranging from wireless reading of water meters to irrigation control and wireless parking meters that could have fluctuating prices based on the time of day.During an earlier panel session at the conference Tuesday, Joanne Hovis, president of Columbia Telecommunications, said that if Google acquires the 700-MHz frequencies to be auctioned off by the FCC, that could change the wireless market.Hovis noted there is much speculation about Google's plans. One audience member speculated Google could open up a wireless network for everybody.?"My personal opinion is I'm not sure Google is serious about bidding on that spectrum," Hovis said. It also would be a few years before Google could build its network, Hovis said.
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The IT director of the Boston Red Sox is bracing himself for the possibility that planned municipal Wi-Fi networks in Boston and neighboring Brookline will interfere with wireless signals at Fenway Park.
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Wi-fi users could be at risk as researchers reveal another attack on the security built into networks.
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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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A startup says it can give subway riders wireless Internet access that&#39;s faster than most home broadband in the U.S.Tests at stations and on a special stretch of track in the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system around San Francisco showed that Wi-Fi Rail&#39;s patent-pending technology delivered more than 15Mbps of wireless throughput to riders and people waiting for trains, the company said. Wi-Fi Rail hopes to roll out such networks on rail systems around the world and charge commuters for access.Commuter rail, with thousands of daily riders, could represent a rich opportunity for public wireless Internet access. Wi-Fi hotspots in airports and coffee shops have drawn some paying users, but the hotspots are useful more for occasional than for regular use. And citywide public Wi-Fi networks, often planned out with local governments, have run into political and business problems.Wi-Fi Rail, founded in 2006 and based near Sacramento, would build two kinds of Wi-Fi networks: one in the cars and one around the tracks, said Michael Cromar, Wi-Fi Rail&#39;s CFO. Passengers would log in to access points on each car, and each car&#39;s network would lock on to one access point after another along the rail system. The trackside access points, in turn, would feed traffic onto fiber-optic lines. Roaming would be handled by the in-car network and be transparent to users, Cromar said.Even better than typical home broadband, the network can deliver its average 15Mbps speed both upstream and downstream, according to Wi-Fi Rail. Passengers would share that link, but in tests, there was no noticeable slowdown between one passenger and eight passengers using the network, Cromar said. The system worked with the trains moving at speeds as high as 65 miles per hour.The company tested its technology in both underground and above-ground parts of the BART system. Above ground, Wi-Fi Rail used standard outdoor access points with line-of-sight antennas to form a link from trains as they went by. In an underground test, the company used &quot;leaky&quot; coaxial cable, a technology some rail systems already use for exchanging operational data with cars, according to Cromar. The leaky cable is deliberately unshielded so signals traveling along it can be picked up all through a tunnel.In-car tests took place on a 2.6-mile BART test track last month, as well as on a stretch of tunnel in San Francisco. Another part of the test proved such a service can draw customers, Cromar said. Wi-Fi Rail set up regular access points in four underground stations in downtown San Francisco and let people waiting for trains register and use the network for free. Without any publicity, more than 6,400 people signed up in less than six months, he said.Although BART hosted the tests, it hasn&#39;t made a deal to have such a network deployed, Cromar said. But Wi-Fi Rail has talked with one interested transit system in the U.S. and is working with a partner to approach a rail system in another country, he said. The company said its technology is ready to go and could be used for anything that follows a predetermined path, including highways.
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SAN FRANCISCO - The big idea came on a trip: Ted Morgan and Michael Shean used Wi-Fi signals in their travels so often to pick up e-mail, they saw a business opportunity in their future.
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Plans for municipal Wi-Fi in a dozen cities currently in negotiations with EarthLink may be in jeopardy as the company is imposing new demands on how the networks are to be paid for.
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Philadelphia may spread the joy of wireless Internet access to its citizens.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- At virtually every turn, Intel Corp. executives are heaping praise on an emerging long-range wireless technology known as WiMAX, which can blanket entire cities with high-speed Internet access.
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(InfoWorld) - The ACLU has turned up the political heat on EarthLink and Google's plan for Wi-Fi in San Francisco, telling the city's Board of Supervisors that the proposed contract doesn't have enough privacy or free speech protections. The ACLU of Northern California said in a letter to the supervisors on Tuesday that both EarthLink's paid service and Google's free offering would fall short of most of the group's recommendations on collection and sharing of personal data and possible tracking of users. Among other things, there are no limits on what kind of information EarthLink can or will collect, and terms for the Google service call for requiring "minimal" information on login without defining "minimal," the letter said. In addition to privacy concerns, the group is worried that knowing information is being collected will cause users to limit what they say and do on the Internet. The city and EarthLink agreed on a contract last month, and EarthLink is confident the closely watched project will get off the ground with deployment of a proof-of-concept network starting in April, said company spokesman Jerry Grasso. But the proposal has been under fire since before the contract was completed, and some members of the board have said a municipally owned system would be better for the city. EarthLink negotiated the deal with the city and would build and operate the network, bringing Google in as a tenant providing the free, slower service. Some critics have warned that San Francisco could be giving a virtual monopoly on citywide Wi-Fi to private companies without ensuring user privacy or complete coverage. The ACLU said a municipal Wi-Fi network should let users opt in or out of any service that collects data on what they look at or search for on the Internet, or their e-mail messages. There are no provisions for that in the paid or free service terms, it said. EarthLink can only save location information for 60 days, but there's no limit to how long it can store personal protected information and no limit to how long Google can store any information, the ACLU said. Users of the EarthLink service can opt out of receiving marketing materials, but EarthLink has free reign to share personal information with partner companies that help it deliver or promote the service. Both service providers can hand over users' personal information for law enforcement or national security reasons without a warrant or notification of the user, though they would require "court-ordered documentation" before doing so. If information is sought for a civil suit, EarthLink or Google would have to tell the user first. EarthLink's Grasso declined to comment on the ACLU's letter, saying EarthLink has not seen it. Google and city representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.
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Pitchforks out for Google, Earthlink, and tech-happy mayor The city-wide Wi-Fi network being pushed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom faces two important hearings this week as a motley band of critics mount a series of challenges to the project, which would be jointly operated by Google and Earthlink.â¦
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The Earthlink-Google plan for free WiFi in San Francisco appears to be derailed -- for now.
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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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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.