San Francisco moving closer to citywide network
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plan to blanket San Francisco with free wireless Internet access will take an important step forward soon, if all goes as expected.
As San Francisco leaders near a decision on who should build and operate a citywide Wi-Fi network, an experienced municipal wireless provider and a nonprofit group working with two IT heavy-hitters appear to remain in the fray along with Google and partner EarthLink.
A panel will soon decide which one of six bidders the city can negotiate with to build the Wi-Fi network.
The City and County of San Francisco is expected by early April to announce its choice from among responders to a request for proposals (RFPs) that the city put out last year. The list has been narrowed to three plans, and the final choice may be unveiled any day now, according to Anne-Marie Fowler, a principal at SF Metro Connect, a collaborative project by Cisco Systems, IBM, and local nonprofit SeaKay. MetroFi, which already operates a wireless data network in Silicon Valley, also is among the three finalists, according MetroFi Chief Executive Officer Chuck Haas.
As envisioned, the project will allow users to get online virtually anywhere in the city, including in homes, parks and offices. The goal, according to the mayor, is to bolster the city’s technology credentials and help bridge the digital divide between Internet haves and have-nots.
Google, the Mountain View online giant, is the most prominent bidder in what is a major detour from its usual search engine business. Wi-Fi users would be able to choose between Google’s free wireless Internet access and a faster subscription service offered by its partner, EarthLink.
Google and EarthLink’s proposal, which would include a free service supported by targeted and location-specific advertising, has drawn wide attention, including criticism from some privacy groups.
The RFP calls for high-speed wireless Internet access that would be available outdoors virtually throughout the city and in most rooms indoors. Like other U.S. cities, San Francisco is pushing wireless in hopes of generating economic activity, bridging the "digital divide" between those who can and can’t afford traditional broadband, and improving city government and public safety communications in the bargain.
For six weeks, a city panel has been evaluating the bids based on the bidders’ financial security, the area they intend to cover with Internet access and an interview, among other things. The panel is expected to make a recommendation as soon as this week, but there could be delays.
San Francisco’s technology department will then open negotiations with the top-ranked bidder. If the parties come to an agreement on the highly coveted contract, the Board of Supervisors and various city agencies will weigh in.
The five-member panel was appointed by Chris Vein, who leads San Francisco’s technology department. The members of the panel will be identified only after they make public their recommendation, in an effort to guard against undue influence by outsiders.
The selection process being used for San Francisco’s Wi-Fi contract is used frequently by the city. Hundreds of panels convene every year to help buy everything from medical equipment to security services. In most cases, panelists are drawn from various city departments based on their expertise.
There is a chance that the Wi-Fi panel could decide that it is not satisfied with the bids and recommend starting the process over. Or it could suggest throwing out the idea entirely.
Ron Vinson, chief administrative officer for the city’s technology department, said of the progress so far on bringing Wi-Fi to San Francisco, "We are very satisfied with the process."
In a recent interview with The Chronicle, Newsom said: "We have some very outstanding bids. In fact, all of them were pretty amazing."
Google and EarthLink have not been told they are out of the running, said EarthLink spokesman Jerry Grasso. City officials could not be reached for comment.
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San Francisco is the largest U.S. city to attempt to create a free Wi-Fi network, which allows users with Wi-Fi compatible computers to get online without plugging in a cable or paying a fee. Since the project was announced, several other cities have expressed interest in creating similar systems, including Mountain View, where Google already has a contract to build a Wi-Fi network.
SeaKay, founded in San Francisco in 2004, operates neighborhood technology centers that provide IT training and resources. SF Metro Connect envisions a nonprofit model supported largely by individual and corporate contributions.
The organization would build a Wi-Fi network using Cisco equipment and offer free access to it at speeds of at least 1 megabit per second, Fowler said. Communications for city government, education, and other official uses could be given priority, but there is no plan to offer a higher tier of service for sale. No user information would be collected, she said.
The other apparent finalist, MetroFi, runs an outdoor mesh network in Sunnyvale, Cupertino, and Santa Clara, and it proposes a similar plan for San Francisco. Customers could get free service by opting to receive ads or paying about $20 per month for access. The network would detect where a user was located at any time and deliver ads local to that neighborhood, said MetroFi’s Haas. The ads also could be keyed to what type of Web sites the user might be visiting, he said. But MetroFi would not associate any location or surfing data with a user’s identity, nor would it save any of that information, Haas said.
Third parties, including carriers and cable operators, could pay SF Metro Connect for the right to offer additional services over the network. For those services, such as video and audio, the third parties could make users log in and pay a fee, Fowler said. Meanwhile, SF Metro Connect would help communities in the city develop their own portals for neighborhood information and communication. IBM would contribute technology for setting up those portals, she said.
Another company that responded to the RFP, NextWLAN, hopes to partner with the winner and provide indoor coverage that it believes the outdoor networks won’t be able to deliver. The Los Gatos, California, startup hopes to build a network of residential access points, said President Carlos Rios.
NextWLAN would make and sell Wi-Fi access points with routing and other features. About one of 10 of the consumers who bought a NextWLAN box would get DSL service paid for by NextWLAN and configure the device as a router. Other boxes nearby would act as repeaters so neighbors could share the service, which would be free.
Also competing for the high-profile contract are MetroFi Inc., Razortooth Communications LLP, NextWLAN Corp., Communication Bridge Global Inc. and SF Metro Connect, a nonprofit group backed by Cisco Systems Inc. and IBM Corp.
Representatives of AT&T, San Francisco’s major DSL provider, have expressed interest in the proposal because it could lead to more DSL connections, Rios said. The free wireless service would be limited to a 384 kbps Internet speed, so users would not be sharing a full DSL experience, he said. AT&T could not immediately provide comment.
Under San Francisco’s plan, the city would pay nothing for the Wi-Fi project. The cost of building the network will be passed on to the winning bidder.
San Francisco hopes to have the system running in autumn