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San Fran Mayor Declares Wireless for All
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:07 AM
from the throwing-down-the-gauntlet dept.
from the throwing-down-the-gauntlet dept.
arvind s. grover writes "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. They don't seem to have much set up yet, and no proposal was laid out for the installation of access points in every nook and cranny of the city. I wonder what vendor is going to get that contract...You might be better off finding a wireless node using NodeDB or this oddly-titled site: cheesebikini."
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[+]
ISPs Losing Interest In Citywide Wireless Coverage 98 comments
The New York Times is running a story about how hope is fading for the implementation of municipal wireless access in cities across the US. Major cities and small towns alike are finding that ISPs are withdrawing from such plans due to the low profitability of ventures that are similar to Philadelphia's incomplete network. We've previously discussed Chicago's and San Francisco's wireless status, and also some of the stumbling blocks other cities have faced. From the Times:
"In Tempe, Ariz., and Portland, Ore., for example, hundreds of subscribers have found themselves suddenly without service as providers have cut their losses and either abandoned their networks or stopped expanding capacity. EarthLink announced on Feb. 7 that 'the operations of the municipal Wi-Fi assets were no longer consistent with the company's strategic direction.' Philadelphia officials say they are not sure when or if the promised network will now be completed."
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How...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How...? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the taxpayers will. The mayor's friends will get the contracts though.
Parent
Re:How...? (Score:5, Insightful)
The median income [msn.com] is $74,000 per year.
San Francisco is a fairly expensive place to live, there are not a lot of poor people there. I'm sure they are only concerned with the people who actually have an address- not homeless people, who don't pay taxes, or vote.
Then again- cities spend a lot of money on streets, traffic lights, etc. And not everyone has a car...
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Re:How...? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:How...? (Score:5, Insightful)
San Francisco has a ridiculously high poor and homeless population. It's truly obscene. However, you can bet money that the mayor is thinking much more about the poor and the homeless and the agencies that support them than he is about rich Pacific Heights Ladies Who Lunch. Google for "Gavin Newsom" and see what the guy stands for, and what's he's done for San Francisco. He's pretty cool.
The median income is so high because there are so many people here with so much money. "Poor" people here make more money than "poor" people in other areas, though, largely due to higher-than-federal minimum wage laws. Still, there are huge swaths of San Francisco that are "poor," and the mayor has focused a large part of his administration on serving the poor and the homeless.
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Looks like another tax hike ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Looks like another tax hike ... (Score:5, Insightful)
When you're dealing with multinational corps for services, socialism lets you get maximum buying power and save money.
I'd say the ideal approach would be to have the city own the infrastructure and contract out the services, then make infrastructure maintenance and improvements a condition of the next round of contracts. That would ensure that the city maintains the ability to easily change companies and prevent them from ever being held over a barrel by their supplier.
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Re:Looks like another tax hike ... (Score:5, Insightful)
City government's job is not to solely start at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, and start moving everyone up. The citizens in the middle don't need to wait until everyone below them has been 'assisted'.
Parks cost a lot of money- most cities attempt to provide nice parks for their residents.
Unfortunately, having a park near your house is not always a good thing. These days, a lot of parks have been turned into de-facto homeless shelters. Every city has the 'homeless park' where nobody else (who actually paid the taxes to build the park) can go. If you live in Sacramento, go hang out at Ceasar Chavez park, on any day other than the free music days. You will be surrounded by homeless people, and all of their belongings.
In the town I live in (see my sig) we have a park like that. It is the park right near downtown- which is surrounded on 3 sides by residential neighborhoods. Who goes to the park- kids? families? No...guys sitting around drinking until the pass out or puke. Great- another park that can't be enjoyed by the general population.
I am NOT saying that we should not spend money to help these people. What I am saying, is that when city funds are used to pay for something else OTHER than social services, it's okay. We can spend money (taxpayer money, and most of the taxpayers are not getting drunk in the park) for something that will benefit the other 99% percent of the community.
Our city also has a large/nice homeless shelter - which for our population is a great base of assistance. But not everything we do needs to be for the assistance of the same group of people. The other 50,000 can benefit from their own taxes too.
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Good idea...but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good idea...but... (Score:5, Funny)
What do mean? The Mayor gave them free WiFi! FREE!
They don't even need the cardboard sign that says, "Will work for bandwidth", anymore.
Seriously, what more do they need?
</SATIRE>
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Re:Good idea...but... (Score:5, Interesting)
sky
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Re:Good idea...but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Berkeley and SF are tolerant places. The cops don't throw them in jail (or beat them and tell them to get out of town). Many places across the US are very intolerant of homeless people, and will run them out of town.
The weather is good most of the year (not too cold, little rain).
Put all these factors together, and you get a recipe for attracting homeless people from all over the country.
It's not an SF problem, it's a US problem. The US should do something about this.
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COOL! (Score:5, Funny)
Just one question (Score:5, Insightful)
Well looky here. (Score:5, Funny)
Anti-competitive? (Score:5, Interesting)
WiGLE! (Score:5, Informative)
um, it's not free as in beer nor as in speech (Score:5, Insightful)
We already have a decent, FREE, and fast wireless network in The City: SFLan.org [archive.org].
Do you really want to be bound by the government's TOS, for a service "sold" as free that you are in fact paying for, whether you use it or not?
Of course, using public money for questionable ends is nothing new... but dear Gavin already invests far too much of our money waging war on the poor (no, not on poverty... on the poor).
Wireless in SanFran?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't it be cheaper just to run hard-wired fiber into every building, and drop off a linksys wireless router to everyone? Probably not really, but it sure seems like it is going to be very difficult to get a good wireless network in that terrain.
is there an election coming up in SF that this guy is trying to get votes for?
There is no such thing as a free lunch (Score:5, Insightful)
2) This will be a freebie to the criminal elements of San Francisco and a huge cost to the law abiding, non-ubergeek. Consider yourself "pwned".
3) Expect this project to cost 10x what it is initially claimed. Gavin Newsom has a lot of paybacks for getting himself into power in San Francisco. Cost overruns will be massive.
4) This is best suited by corporation competition not government largess. Do we really want municipal Ma Bells all over the country?
If you want to do this on the cheap, make the homeless wear waypoint hats for their welfare checks. (insert joke about the waypoints keeping the government satellite signals out of their heads).
What's up with all the broken Coral cache links? (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember, its:
http://hostname.com.nyud.net:8090/rest/of/u
not
http://hostname.com/rest/of/uri?whatev
Strangely enough, in this case all the links seem to work faster than their coral counterparts.
Fixed coral links:
Reuters story [nyud.net]
NodeDB [nyud.net]
cheesebikini [nyud.net]
Re:Is this necessarily a good thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed -- and what if I don't like the wireless service the city provides (the service is slow, etc.) I could get cable or DSL internet access, but then I'd essentially be paying for two internet connections.
Then there's the issue of rules. What kind of access restrictions will a city put up? Could you, in this instance, host a web site that gay people find insulting? I've never been banned from a service that I still had to pay for afterwards...
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Re:Is this necessarily a good thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
If they don't manage it, the rest of the Internet might just throw the San Francisco wireless IP range into a "blackhole at the firewall" list in self-defence. And if SF taxpayers can't connect to anyone, who do they call at "SanFran Tech Support" to complain?
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Re:Is this necessarily a good thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's very, very difficult to calculate the benefits of this, and really of any infrastructure investment.
(as far as I understand, there are no good models for this. Building roads is still mostly a political decision.)
But there are lots of things which conciveably balance the costs, most notably increased business productivity, competition and growth, and increased property value (which generates returns though property tax).
So, yeah, it's political.. but it doesn't automatically mean it's not economically justified. But whether it is or not is pure speculation. There's no way to tell in the short run.
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Re:Is this necessarily a good thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
The mayor is *not* trying to get re-elected. The mayor, in fact, is only in the first year of his 4-year term, and by just about any San Franciscan's account he has done nothing but kicked ass and mopped up the streets afterwards. He has completely revamped the budget, took a voluntary pay cut, reorganized the police and fire departments, cracked down on unsolved murders and crime, led the nation on human rights and gay marriage issues, and tackled San Francisco's biggest issue-- homelessness-- with a multidisciplinary team that seems to actually be working.
Say whatever you want to about Gavin Newsom, but he has been a major boon to San Francisco at a time when it's down. The WiFi thing of course could cost a lot of money, but imagine the potential benefits of pervasive, citywide, free access.
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