Free WiFi Trend Continues

Palal writes "San Francisco is about to embark on a Free (or low cost) WiFi campaign with the mayor holding the reins, of course, in hopes of offering more low-income residents easier access to the Internet. Since San Francisco, unlike Philadelphia (previously covered on Slashdot for a similar project), is only 49 square miles, will this work here and can this be accomplished in a year as promised or is this just another political plot to get the Mayor re-elected?"

low-income residents easier access to the Internet

[Gothmolly]

So people can afford a $400 Dell cheapass PC, but can't spring for a $5 a month Internet dialup connection?
Oh wait, I forgot that its the fault of the people on the 'have' side of the 'Digital Divide' that the other people can't get online. Our village is in shambles! I need a hug.

who is this really for?

[AnonymousJackass]

Here's what concerns me about this. Offering free wireless is going to cost money (obviously). Is this really how low-income families would like that money to be spent? Wouldn't they prefer cheaper health care? Better accomodation? Nicer schools? Nicer communities? Did someone actually poll these people and say "we've got $XXXX to spend on you guys -- what do you want?" and the low-income people say "ooh free-wireles would make our lives so much better!"

I'm not trolling -- honest! I just wonder if this isn't, as the blurb suggests, more about PR for the mayor than actually helping people.

Giving it away?

[hshana]

Usually when the big telcos/ISP's say that muni-wifi is anti-competitive, I tend to laugh. Why would SF need to do this as a city? NetZero already offers free internet access. Is that access not deemed sufficient or fast enough by the city? Do less affluent people really need to watch TV over their computers? One of the nice things about living in a major metropolitan area is that you can usually walk to the library or get there easily. I can see offering free access in the library, but to the whole city?

Re:Low income residents in San Francisco

[qwijibo]

I'm only semi-joking, but have you considered the homeless people who have laptops? I've read of people who are living out of their cars in the bay area after losing their house. Without connectivity, they'd have a hard time finding a decent job. Keep in mind that this is an area where you can't just get a job at McDonalds to pay rent while you look for a better job. I'm sure the real goal is to make wireless connectivity more convenient for the people who can afford to pay for it, but others can benefit as well.

Re:low-income residents easier access to the Inter

[vertinox]

So people can afford a $400 Dell cheapass PC, but can't spring for a $5 a month Internet dialup connection?

Actually, certain organisations in Philadelphia give computers to the poor, but one of the main gripes was that the poor couldn't afford to do anything with them. Still the $5 dial up access is less than the $20 that Philly is going to offer for wireless, but if you take a look at the major ISP prices (Earthlink... AOL...) for dial up that it's about the same cost. Do you think the poor are going to hunt the net and search for a no-named mom and pop ISP that they haven't seen advertising on? They'll be luck to see a Net Zero add.

And personally, I'm all for a city wide Wifi because not only will I keep my Comcast cable connection, but I can afford a wireless connection for only $20 more so I can haul a laptop anywhere in the city and have an internet connection.

Hell if it works right I can haul a computer to Tatooed Mom's On South Street and drink a PBR and post to slashdot... Although that might get dangerous after the 6th one.

What is all this going to result in?

[eno2001]

All of these people are putting up free WiFi access with different levels of service. Some only allow web and mail, others are wide open and still others only provide custom content with no access to outside resources. Individually this is all fine and dandy. But, if WiFi is slated to be the "next internet" as a lot of people like to claim that it is, we need a lot more standardization than we have. Not to mention that there are a lot of people who are working very hard to try and stamp out these initiatives because it hurts or could hurt their businesses (telcos, cell phone providers, cable and satellite operators).

It's nice to see the free hotspots popping up here and there, but other than checking mail and looking at some web content, how useful is it? Why isn't there a national or global cooperative that would define the services that hotspots should offer in order to create a truly national or global network that parallels the internet? How do we keep the telcos and their ilk from ruining this? It's not like they're going to die overnight because landlines are still going to be necessary for several reasons, with bandwidth and reliability being the most important.

Keep the free WiFi coming, but really what does it all mean? It's not like this is becoming anything particularly useful yet.

Re:Insightful?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous becuase it's not PC, but also it's true.

I work in this field. sometimes.

they have phone lines.

they have cars, despite public transit within 2 blocks of their subsizized apartments or half-price homes (by comparison I have no car, despite public transit within 8 blocks of my apartment)

and what infuriates me the most is that they have cable tv at 60-100/month

make your own judgements. i have.

they don't need subsidies or freebies. they need to decide what their priorities are, and then be left with the consequences of making those decisions.

enough already. this is not a useful kind of charity.

Re:What About Topography

[rivvah]

This can't be stated enough -- we already have massive problems with cell coverage in this city, I can walk two blocks from my current location and go from 6 bars of signal to 0 bars, dead. All carriers, all areas, if it ain't flat it has problems.

Two questions:

- how is coverage in this hilly city going to be addressed?
- how are you going to keep from stomping on existing networks (11 APs in range at work, 9 in range where I sit right now) like sflan?

The idea is good, but it's going to have some serious hurdles. But all in all we like Gavin, he tries to do good things.

It's all about economic development

[PCM2]

San Francisco is a city with its fair share of problems. There is lots of economic disparity here. As other people have mentioned, you will not walk a block downtown without getting panhandled. The neighborhood I live in is fairly residential and yet there are still a couple of homeless people that park themselves in front of the local restaurants every evening.

What's more, contrary to popular perception about the Bay Area's liberality, a lot of the larger-scale economic disparity divides along racial lines. Neighborhoods like Bayview and Hunter's Point are predominantly black and in many ways they are almost completely neglected. Those areas were once Naval shipyards and that has been the excuse to lump them under Federal jurisdiction, not that of the City of San Francisco, which means they get passed up for a lot of urban development programs. Not to mention that the shipyards' legacy is a ton of environmental poisons -- Bayview has the highest instance of breast cancer in the Bay Area, if not California.

The only way you are going to start to help the economic underclass of San Francisco get ahead is to get them out of areas like this and into productive roles in society, and the way to do that is to provide them with opportunities. Free Internet access can help to do that. For example, it could make distance learning possible for single mothers and the disabled. It can give the elderly another lifeline to the outside world. It can provide communications facilities for not-for-profit organizations that conduct economic development programs. Hell, even letting kids surf the Web for free is one more thing that will keep them from running down Mission Street in packs, brawling and trading gunshots with each other.

Is there such a thing as a free lunch? No. Should the residents of San Francisco support programs that sound like they could benefit the residents of San Francisco, whether or not they think the mayor is a publicity whore? Sure. Why not?

Re:Insightful?

[Skye16]

I would tend to agree with you, but I've seen too many poor parents (my own among them) choose the unecessary (like mass quantities of drugs and alcohol) over the necessary (like clothes). Do you know what it's like to be getting a job at 10 years old just so you don't have to wear clothes from goodwill or handme downs? Have you ever eaten cereal from a sack without milk? I would hazard a guess and say "no".

Without the "haves" subsidizing my food, my housing, my education (both normal K-12 AND college), I never would have broken the cycle. I would have ended up just like them.

Is that a good thing? By some people's estimation, yes, because, while I was being provided for, there were 2 other people (my parents) who were abusing the system. They'd rather cut a kid like me off just to stop the worthless dregs of society than support those dregs and myself.

Frankly, I'm glad they aren't the ones making the rules. Without that help, I probably wouldn't have finished highschool, much less gone through college, or even think about plans for pursuing my masters.

I'll be the first to admit there are problems with welfare, subsidies, or other freebies. But without them, I'd probably be living in a run down trailer with two or three kids, a drug habit, empty 40's strewn all over the floor, a car up on blocks in my front yard and a job moving heavy things. Hooray for that.