It is California’s newest gold rush and people are lining up to stake their claim. From San Francisco to an Indian Reservation in San Diego County, communities are getting wired. Whole cities, even counties, are offering their citizens free wireless Internet access and it could create a historic change in the communications revolution. No one is sure where this revolution will lead but the mantra is “build it and they will come.” Or give it to the people and see what develops.
Big companies like Google and Earthlink see gold in that plan and are partnering with the city of San Francisco to build a network to connect the city. A poor, rural southeastern Indian reservation in San Diego County is providing wireless Internet access to reservations across a 250 square mile network via transmitters mounted on mountaintops. Suddenly, homes without electricity or telephone now have email. So why are some taking issue with this development? There are worries about the value of the service, invasion of privacy, and who is making the real money here.
Correspondent Craig Miller reports.
- Tribal Digital Village
- HP’s grant to Tribal Digital Village
- HP’s press release on the third anniversary of Tribal Digital Village, March 2004
- MuniWireless, blog about city- and county-wide wireless broadband networks.
- Municipal Broadband Nationwide, CNET
- Privacy Analysis of the Six Proposals for San Francisco Municipal Broadband from the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Google and Earthlink were the winners.
- The $100 Laptop, a MIT project to provide accessible computing and networking to children in developing nations.
- “SF Wi-Fi All Free, All the Time?”, Wired article on Google providing free wireless access in San Francisco
- “Don’t Let Fear Kill Muni Wi-Fi”, Wired article on legal challenges from ISPs to stop municipal wifi internet access
- “Google’s Search for Political Influence”, Los Angeles Times
- “Switchboard in the Sky”, The New York Times
- “Wireless Bid in California”, The New York Times
- “Wi-fi and the Cities”, The New York Times
Listen to the commentary
March 22nd, 2007 at 6:47 pm
For business travelers I can see where this would be a major draw for a city. However, if all cities in CA offer free wi-fi, what will that do to existing cable and phone companies internet businesses?
March 23rd, 2007 at 9:07 pm
Your report on the ‘free’ WiFi deal being peddled by Google and Earthlink to San Francisco, says nothing about the core opposition to the deal, which shows that, in truth, the deal is a monopoly franchise give-away that will mire San Franciscans in cheap, slow, obsolete wireless service (not even fast enough for video and phone calls) for a locked-in 16 years; while other communities will fly past S.F. with high speed fiber optic based networks instead.
For details see:
http://our-city.org/campaigns/index.html
and
http://public.freemuni.net/
Thanks,
Eric Brooks
Campaign Coordinator
Our City
http://our-city.org
415-756-8844
March 24th, 2007 at 8:36 am
I have raised this issue with my city and county officials. Currently there is a move afoot to create wireless internet access at county libraries. Although a good first step, I am concerned about filtering software and how it may affect performance.