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San Francisco Free Wi-Fi Plan Fails
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Aug 30, 2007 12:04 PM
from the no-money-in-it dept.
from the no-money-in-it dept.
Reader r writes with news from San Francisco that Earthlink has backed out of contract negotiations to blanket the city with free Wi-Fi, citing money problems. Seems like only yesterday that Chicago's Wi-Fi deal fell apart for much the same reason. Quoting: "The contract, which was three years in the making, had run into snags with the Board of Supervisors, but ultimately it was undone when Atlanta-based EarthLink announced Tuesday that it no longer believed providing citywide Wi-Fi was economically viable for the company... EarthLink spokesman Jerry Grasso said that EarthLink was willing to work with San Francisco but had decided that it 'was not willing to work in the business model where EarthLink fronts all the money to build, own and operate the network.'"
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IT: Chicago Cancels Municipal Wi-Fi Plan 93 comments
thatshortkid writes "The Chicago Tribune is reporting that a proposed plan for municipal wi-fi in Chicago has fallen apart. The story cites contract disputes and the falling price of residential broadband as reasons for the talks collapsing. 'Chicago officials had intended that the city would offer infrastructure, but no cash, to a carrier that would use its own funds to build the network here. EarthLink and AT&T Inc. submitted proposals to the city, but after months of negotiations the parties were unable to reach agreement. The companies sought a commitment from Chicago to be an "anchor tenant," agreeing to pay to use the Wi-Fi network to support city services, but the city declined ... Even if Chicago declines to back a municipal wireless network, city residents soon will gain more Internet connection options. Sprint Nextel Corp. is building a wireless WiMax network here that is due to offer service next spring.'"
[+]
Mobile WiMAX to Succeed Where Muni WiFi Failed? 93 comments
WiNot writes "WiMAX's supporters are positioning Mobile WiMAX as an alternative to municipal WiFi networks in the wake of recent cancellation or postponement of muni WiFi projects in Chicago and San Francisco. 'There's no business case for municipal WiFi ... With many municipal WiFi deployments in a holding pattern, it may be Sprint's Xohm WiMAX network will be up and running before muni WiFi can get its act together.' From what Ars saw during its Motorola-sponsored cruise on the Chicago River earlier this week, WiMAX has the potential to deliver the goods in terms of speed, latency, and reliability. If Sprint hits its goal of blanketing metropolitan areas with WiMAX in a timely fashion and prices the service attractively, the kind of expansive municipal WiFi networks once envisioned in Chicago, Houston, and San Francisco could go the way of Pets.com and Flooz."
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3 years? (Score:2)
Of course, if they could break even on this one, the next one they could make a little money (having had experience) and then have a massive rollout where they mass-produce everything and make a killing.
Re:3 years? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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Most recently, the board decided to cut Earthlink's contract in half and demand twice the bandwidth, as if they could "fix" things by jacking up numbers. These assholes do this to every project in the City, h
Wifi monopolies (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah I never liked the idea of government run internet access. First it is anti-competitive, and second I do not like the government censor^H^H^H^H^H^H providing my access to information.
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Re:Wifi monopolies (Score:5, Insightful)
- pay the local governement for internet access and use it, or
- pay the local government for internet access and not use it
Whao, that *is* choice!
Parent
Re:Wifi monopolies (Score:4, Insightful)
Govt provided internet would (among many other bad things) reduce choices. Think of schooling for example, when everyone has to pay for public school regardless of usage, the private schools can only cater to very specific niches (mostly religious and wealthy).
Parent
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And without public schools, only the rich could afford to go to school at all.
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No, funds could be tied to individual students as opposed to monolithic government institutions and private entities could compete to attract these students. That model seems to outperform the US model according to OECD metrics.
It seems ironic that countries such as Belgium and France rely on free enterprise and competition to improve the quality of education while the US is locked into a poorly run socialist system that outsp
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Free government-run internet is still a lot better than free government-controlled, corporate-run internet. With the latter, which this would have been, the corporation gets to limit traffic as they see fit, then charge money to anybody who wants a data rate better than edge, gets to keep any other corporations out of the city, etc., plus the government can probably insist on censorship. You get the all disadvantages of corporate backing PLUS all the disadvantages of government backing.
What we need is m
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That sounds a lot like a benevolent dictatorship. Nice to have, but politically impossible.
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By the same accord, why extend telephone/DSL and cable TV/internet monopolies?
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City councils should cut those taxes and allow cable companies to compete, offering subscribers better TV service at lower prices. But people see the new municipal goodies and credit their city councilman then they blame the cable company for the size of the bill.
Yesterday... (Score:5, Funny)
Because it was?
Ok, so it was reported yesterday, but it happened close enough to be reasonable called "yesterday".
Re:Yesterday... (Score:4, Informative)
Comcast and ATT must be laughing now.
Parent
Delays in St. Louis (Score:2)
Minor problem: The poles are only powered during the night.
Link [dslreports.com]
Rio Rancho, NM (Score:2)
Philadelphia Contract? (Score:3, Interesting)
Earthlink Wi-Fi in Anaheim (Score:4, Interesting)
I signed up on the year-contract to get the best rate. Service was very spotty. Aggravating at times, but generally ok for my purposes since I was using my access now and then to check email and to research any questions that came up in the course of my work. Most my work was being done offline.
What really turned me off the service is that Earthlink offered no email support -- you had to call their support line (off-shored) and wait on hold for an indeterminate amount of time to get simple questions answered. Also, I was never able to pick up a signal from my laptop's wireless card. I needed to be cabled into their ugly little wireless modem. Even from the Starbucks at the epicenter of the coverage area (across the street from City Hall), I couldn't get a signal on my wireless card directly.
I had a suspicion that the service was going to be a colossal failure. I canceled just last week as soon as my year was up. Hadn't even used it the last three months I paid for it. Interesting now to see these agreements crumbling left and right. I get the impression that it's much harder to deploy reliable city-wide wireless service than it looks on paper. (I saw crews installing the little wireless transponders on lampposts across the city -- how much has to be put in maintaining these things? Bird shit a factor?)
And with the limited initial rollout area, I always wondered how economically viable it was going to be. It was supposed to be citywide by around this time, but even then I question how many people are going to sign up for this. Finally, I suspect it's much less viable for the high-demand media-rich content people are now coming to expect online.
It's too bad because the failure of wi-fi just reinforces the cable/telecom strangehold over broadband service. Is wi-fi actually succeeding anywhere?
Parent
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I've seen communisim first hand. (Score:3, Insightful)
I kiss the soil of the U.S. every time I return.
I've see Communism first hand. Being told "sorry, you don't have water on Tuesdays and Thursdays" is unplesant. Yes, I understand there is a failiure in the infrastructure but it isn't corrected without incentive. People, sadly, acclimate to piss-poor surroundings. One or two generations of that and getting out is difficult.
What does this have to do with Wireless? A lot.
I thought about designing my own 'free' wireless network. The manpower and cost to keep it up and running is obscene. Even with free hardware and ISP service, the cost of making sure it's running 100% is a full time job, if not two.
Without a financial incentive, there is little to be gained. The leaches of society would tear down the system.
While Capitalism has it's flaws, humanity isn't willing to share and play nice. Yet.
Re:I've seen communisim first hand. (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's a thought: perhaps the USSR's problems were not entirely caused by who owned what.
Parent
Free?! (Score:3, Insightful)
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The free users (at 300kbit) were supposed to
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Don't be silly (Score:3, Funny)
San Fransisco- Wi-fi free
google's fault (Score:2)
Minneapolis is almost done (Score:5, Informative)
More info here: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/wirelessminneapol
Many squad cars and firetrucks are already using the wireless technology and a number of cameras are used for survelence in high-crime areas. Since I drive through one of these areas every day, I can tell you the cameras have already made a real difference!
There is hope that with this kind of access, that the city will become a more livable place and that some lower income people will be able to use these services to better themseleves. While I hope that this is true, I'll also take it with a grain of salt and say that I will believe it when I see it.
This service was used for several days after the bridge disaster with very good results. Talk about trial by fire!
Perhaps this opens the door for MetroFi (Score:4, Informative)
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Philadelphia (Score:3, Informative)
Question (Score:2)
I got curious. Is this Wireless internet behind a NAT? Does it support IPv6?
given that earthlink rides the other isp's... (Score:2)
Who owns the network and how does the law see it? (Score:2)
The SCOTUS and other courts frequently pull legal arguments out their ass. The best one that comes to mind was Scalia's lowering of requirements on poli
Constitution not offended by fit of stupidity ... (Score:4, Informative)
No, you actually have more privacy if government operates it. Government is subject to various ammendments, but individuals or corporations are not. Also, there are various privacy acts that apply to government but not individuals or corporations.
The best one that comes to mind was Scalia's lowering of requirements on police to read rights because of the "new professionalism among police." He based a ruling on how he feels about the current state of police professionalism.
Scalia lowered nothing. He wrote the dissenting opinion. The court had upheld Miranda.
His argument was not based upon police professionalism: "The Court did not just apply the Constitution when it handed down Miranda, it expanded the Constitution, imposing an immense and antidemocratic prophylactic rule upon Congress and the states. It was an example of raw, judicial power that simply asserted a constitutional right
Note that by "governing themselves" he does not mean governing themselves well: "Preventing foolish people from incriminating themselves is the only purpose of Miranda, and that is a far cry from what the Fifth Amendment requires in terms of protecting someone from being compelled to incriminate themself. Nor is a lawyer required because the interrogators can do the same as any lawyer can -- tell the suspect they have a right to be silent. The Constitution is not offended by a criminal's commendable qualm of conscience or fortunate fit of stupidity."
Parent
Technical Issues (Score:3, Interesting)
Second, trying to blanket an entire city at once is doable, but it's far more practical to grow the network from little seed areas (while keeping future growth in mind) - blanket a six block area of downtown, for instance, and then expand from that. This lets you get everything right for a small area before you apply that to larger areas - it's the way almost all WISP (wireless ISPs) operate and it works fairly well.
I think Earthlink finally realized it wasn't gonna work, which of course makes all the assumptions under which they signed contracts not so great for them.
money makes the world go round (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh right, there is none.
Everything useful in SF is doomed anyway (Score:2)
Rob Malda's area too (Score:2)
But a good portion of the population (i.e. most of Ann Arbor) can get fairly cheap DSL through AT&T/Speakeasy (okay, maybe Speakeasy isn't so cheap), or most of the county (I think) can get
Houston delayed by nine months (Score:3, Interesting)
One astute commentator [chron.com] wrote:
A better idea might be to sell repeaters (and bandwidth) to businesses at a discount rate, so that they can give their customers free public wi-fi. If the City of Houston chipped in for a few of its parks and libraries, we'd be basically complete, since there are almost no public spaces in America that aren't businesses or government institutions.
Wi-max? (Score:4, Insightful)
Springfield, IL, too (Score:3, Interesting)
For more information (Score:3, Informative)
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Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Now Meraki [meraki.com] is doing it, a company backed in by Google.
Read more about it, A Free Mesh Network for San Francisco [technologyreview.com]
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https://home.feather.net/sanfrancisco [feather.net]
Well, that's what govt. will get you! (Score:2)
Personally, I think there were more than a few people enamored with a utopian ideal of "free Internet for all!", without considering the reasons it hasn't really happened spontaneously first.
My thinking is, if the *demand* was truly there for wi-fi practically everywhere in a city, you'd al