NEWS: SF Wi-Fi 'elephant' tramples Google, mayor

San Francisco's showcase Wi-Fi project is turning into a quagmire for both city mayor Gavin Newsom, and Google.

Newsom announced the project in October 2005, and Google showered the mayor with affection: a trip to Davos in Larry and Sergei's private jet, and the company offered him campaign contributions. Not surprisingly, Earthlink, Google's partner which will actually be doing the work, was announced the winner in April last year.

But Earthlink had two formidable obstacles to contend with: a challenging topology for wireless deployment - San Francisco officially has 43 hills - and the city's taste for political combat.

While Wi-Fi evangelists urged the city not to look a gift horse in the mouth, city supervisors had other ideas.

On January 9th, Supervisor Jake McGoldrick tabled a long overdue motion requesting a cost-benefit analysis. The "free" connection speeds barely met FCC definitions, he said, and were far short of other municipalities 1Gbit/s Wi-Fi connections. Wi-Fi was rapidly obsoleted, he argued, and the city would serve its citizens better with subsidized, city-managed fiber network, with Wi-Fi for a few open areas.

"It is a very slow system that very few people would want to use," he concluded. McGoldrick's motion urged the city to restrict the Earthlink deployment to a couple of mile-square test areas. It struck a chord with residents who worried that it was creating a private monopoly.

[MORE]
Reply to
John Navas
Loading thread data ...

John Navas hath wroth:

(...)

Sigh. 1Gbit/sec is slow? I wish I had that with my wireless setup.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 17:18:34 -0800, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

That is of course a typo, with the intended number being 1 Mbps.

Reply to
John Navas

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.