Google has teamed up with EarthLink in a bid to offer free wireless Internet access throughout the city of San Francisco and premium service for a fee, a Google spokeswoman said in a statement.
Google and EarthLink have submitted a joint proposal to provide free "wi-fi," or wireless, service citywide, Google said in a written statement.
We have submitted this proposal because at Google we are focused on creating new technologies that make it easier for people to quickly access the world’s information, the Mountain View, California, company said. "It is also a way for Google to support the local community." We believe this proposal and our combined technological expertise will benefit the residents of San Francisco by offering a choice in connectivity and service providers.
The Google-EarthLink bid was among six presented to the city, according to a statement from the office of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. A review panel is expected to make recommendations by early April, the statement said.
San Francisco has been accepting bids from technology firms interested in making the city a wireless computer Mecca in exchange for the chance to make money from online advertising and fees for premium services.
The partnership, revealed recently, represents the first time that Google has acknowledged it wants help in its quest to provide free wireless, or Wi-Fi, service throughout San Francisco, where the hills could make reliable Internet connections more difficult.
Google, which runs the Internet’s leading search engine, and EarthLink, a major Internet service provider, had been bidding against each other but recently decided it made more sense to team up.
EarthLink and Google getting together on this is a very powerful combination, said telecom industry analyst Jeff Kagan.
"This is the beginning of this effort to build a wi-fi network in city after city all over the country." Kagan predicted more Internet companies would form alliances to compete for contracts to provide free wireless computer services in cities. EarthLink is based in Atlanta, Georgia.
"I think both companies benefit from this partnership in terms of increasing their odds to win," Bill Tolpegin, vice president of development and planning at EarthLink Municipal Networks, said in an interview.
Under the partnership, Google would manage the free Wi-Fi service, which will run at 300 kilobits per second, while EarthLink would offer a 1-megabit-per-second service with customer support for $20 a month or less, he said. “Cable companies, telephone companies and local Internet Service Providers are expected to be charged $9 to $12 a month wholesale charges to use the Wi-Fi network for reselling their own wireless service, he said.”
Under the deal, EarthLink would pay for most of the projected $15 million cost to build and maintain San Francisco’s Wi-Fi network over 10 years, said Don Berryman, EarthLink’s president of municipal networks.
EarthLink has won a similar 10-year contract to provide Wi-Fi coverage to Philadelphia. There, EarthLink will sell the service wholesale to Internet service providers for $9 per user per month.
Several other large cities, including Chicago and Minneapolis, are working with the private sector to build Wi-Fi networks, but the San Francisco project has been among the most closely watched because of Google’s interest in blanketing the 46.5-mile-square city with free Internet access.
Last summer Newsom initiated the San Francisco Tech Connect project, whose mandate is to bring affordable broadband Internet access to San Francisco’s nearly 750,000 residents.
If San Francisco picks the proposal from Google and EarthLink, it would become the largest U.S. city yet to offer a free Wi-Fi service.
The San Francisco bid has spurred speculation that Google some day hopes to build a national Wi-Fi network to ensure more people have Internet access so they can view the moneymaking ads distributed by the company’s search engine. Online advertising accounted for the bulk of Google’s $1.5 billion profit last year.
Under Google’s San Francisco proposal, the free Wi-Fi access will be financed by ads.
This is not the first time that Google and EarthLink have worked together. Google has been running the search engine on EarthLink’s website since 2002.
The other proposals were submitted by Communication Bridge Global, MetroFi, NextWLAN, Razortooth Communications (dba RedTAP) and SF Metro Connect (a joint venture of community-computing nonprofit SeaKay and Cisco Systems and IBM).
San Francisco hopes to pick a winning bid in April, paving the way for its Wi-Fi network to be switched on late this year.
This proposal presents a unique opportunity for both companies, Berryman said in a statement.