SF Wifi More Than Flipping a Switch 114
An anonymous reader writes "News.com is carrying a story looking at the costly rollout of the Google/EarthLink SF Wifi project." From the article: "EarthLink said it expects the project to run to between $6 million and $8 million in initial costs, which include attaching radios and receivers to utility poles throughout the city. Within 10 years it expects the whole network, complete with upgrades and maintenance, to cost about $15 million. Finer financial details of the project haven't been made public, but the plan calls for EarthLink and Google to contribute to the initial cost of building the network. It's not clear what the split between the two companies will be. Once the network is built, Google will pay EarthLink for access to the network on a wholesale basis. In order to make access free to people in San Francisco, Google will use revenue generated from local advertisements to pay for access to the EarthLink network."
This advertising thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Or am I mischaracterizing Google's "free service" business plan?
Re:This advertising thing (Score:2)
Re:This advertising thing (Score:1, Flamebait)
Advertisements for Child Porn [slashdot.org]?
Re:This advertising thing (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not familiar with how Google plans on making money. Here's how this makes sense to me.
1. Offer free wi-fi (doesn't even need to be the ad supported account thing they're planning - it could totally free).
2. This increases the total number of people who will web surf.
3. This increases the total amount of time people already spend web surfing (they can cheaply surf while they're away from home/work now)
Re:This advertising thing (Score:5, Funny)
1) If you're using a Windows machine, it'll probably just blue screen you, you'll curse Microsoft, and probably just use Google the next time, I mean, what kind of worthless operating system/browser pair can't even load their own company's search page. Sometime though, it'll do the second option, just to keep people entertained.
2) If you are Linux/UNIX/Macix it renders a custom search page for you that LOOKS like the search engine you requested, but actually returns Google results and displays Google ads. Google considers this a risky play, as they could just redirect you to the Google home page, but they feel its necessary to maintain the cloak on this operation.
Hey, this is just what you do, if you have virtually limitless processing power, bandwidth, and storage.
Re:This advertising thing (Score:2)
Re:This advertising thing (Score:2)
Hey, I'm using NetZero already, don't advertise to me. It felt like spyware, terminating my account didn't, and removing all traces of it from my PC was a registry nightmare.
Re:This advertising thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Double those costs.
Now, double them again.
Google is trying to do with one public frequency and a LAN-based technology what Metricom could barely do with three public frequency ranges and a true microcellular archite
Re:Ad-driven access (Score:1, Interesting)
Writing themselves over the page?
But yeah, the only reason I got flashblock (Not adblock) is because of those annoying flash ads. Some of them even dare to have sound. I finally got so pissed over my PC getting to 90% CPU util
Re:Ad-driven access (Score:2)
What other ad based wifi access projects have there been? I know of ones at hotels that make you pay to access and still display ads, but I don't travel enough to see these other free ones. What problems do they have? Given Google's normal approach to ads though, I think they'll be able to find a way to make the ads as unannoying as possible. Unless they make you install some
Re:Ad-driven access (Score:2)
Parent said "Ad-driven access" (Score:2)
I agree though, this is probably the first (or near-first) Wi-Fi project that they're expecting to pay for with advertising. It feels a little too much like a dot-bomb startup idea to me. All the "Web 2.0" hype has me wondering if failing to learn from history is one of those permanent human flaws.
Re:Parent said "Ad-driven access" (Score:1)
MetroFi did this in Santa Clara, Cupertino and Sunnyvale! They are using ad based revenue to offer free WiFi to their users. See the press release from December of 2005 Here [metrofi.com]
They have just won the bids for Aurora, IL & Portland, OR.
Odd... I live in Santa Clara and hadn't heard (Score:2)
Re:Parent said "Ad-driven access" (Score:2)
Re:Ad-driven access (Score:2)
Re:Ad-driven access (Score:2)
If you can't see why that's a bad idea, I'm not even going to bother telling you.
Re:Ad-driven access (Score:2)
Re:Ad-driven access (Score:1)
Citywide hotspots (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Citywide hotspots (Score:2)
Is it cheap? No. But it's available: http://www.direcway.com/ [direcway.com]
Re:Citywide hotspots (Score:2)
1) Terresterially based (or reasonable fascimilie, ie: cell/fixed wireless to semi-local site)
2) Reasonable Latency (for all your VoIP and other streaming media apps)
3) Bidirectional (yes, cable and sat solved this awhile ago, but it's still popular since the internet is all download, right? nobody ever publishes content)
I have a similar problem, I am planning on making another call (now that it's been about 1-1.5 yrs since i spoke to the local construction manager) to the cabl
Re:Citywide hotspots (Score:1)
Re:Citywide hotspots (Score:2)
Re:Citywide hotspots (Score:1)
The idea is to get ~rid~ of monopolies, and govts power to create/protect them, not use govt to create ~more~ monopolies.
Yes, there are drawbacks to living in rural areas. Those drawbacks are often what attract people to living in rural areas in the first place.
Not Trolling - Really (Score:1)
That's unfortunate... (Score:2, Interesting)
In about 10 years you're going to be able to buy single wireless access points from Best Buy that will cover the size of the city and it's bandwidth needs for about 50 USD.
While I can understand the desire for the project in the long run I think it's going to look as wasteful as the number of railroad tracks that have been abandoned across the US, and in about 1/10th the time.
Re:That's unfortunate... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not going to happen given how the FCC manages spectrum and transmission power.
Re:That's unfortunate... (Score:2, Informative)
Good point. Technology changes rapidly, not the laws of physics. For an access point to have that kind of capability, it would dump pretty high-power transmissions into the EM spectrum. While it is possible that the technology to do that will improve, by
Re:That's unfortunate... (Score:2)
Re:That's unfortunate... (Score:5, Interesting)
I dunno, those railroad tracks might look wasteful now, but they were a huge part of industry and economy in the past. Just because something is going to be obsolete in the future (near or far) I don't think it's necessarily not worth doing.
Railroads entered in an era of ubiquitous travel, perhaps this google thing will enter in the era of ubiquitous net access. (As another stated, some areas have no access to broadband at all.) Personally, my hope is maybe if these sorts of networks are open and usable enough, it will give comcast et. al. the overpriced slap they deserve.
Re:That's unfortunate... (Score:1)
My guess is that these networks will remain slower than the wired connections internet providers will offer. Sure, you can get 300kbps out of them, but if you pay $$/mo
Re:That's unfortunate... (Score:1)
Re:That's unfortunate... (Score:1, Offtopic)
My refrence to single access points is about the advancement of technology. I didn't mean to suggest that people would actually want/need this technology.
For God's sake... if these people are THIS critical of such a comment I can only imagine some of the other posts they feel the need to be so critical of.
Re:That's unfortunate... (Score:1)
The abandoned railroadtracks are wasteful, but not in the way you mean. All that transportation capacity has been swithced to the freeways on to rubber wheels.
You could almost compare it to abandoning a huge network of optical cables and instead using current wireless technology for the whole internet.
Re:That's unfortunate... (Score:2)
The rail system also has a indirect value in terms of right of way and associated power networks. The Sprint telco was a spin-off of the Southern Pacific Railroad INTernal fiber network.
As for wireless, while the wireless routers may change, requiring changeover of the circ
Re:That's unfortunate... (Score:1)
Are those stickers Do not use near people with pacemakers just for show?
San Fransisco (Score:1)
Re:San Fransisco (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Ad supported tech-support (Score:2)
That is what the Ad-supported tech support is for...
Tech support person: "Thank you for calling Google/Earthlink Wireless support! How can I help you!"
Customer: "I can't connect to the internet!"
Tech support person: "Are you on a free account?"
Customer: "Ummm... I think..."
Tech support person: *types in "I can't connect to the internet in google"* "Sponsored Links T1's starting
Is WiFi outdated ? (Score:2)
Re:Is WiFi outdated ? (Score:1)
WiFi and WiMax serve different needs (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure SanFrancisco is already well served with cable and DSL options for homeowners. The people interested in free WiFi access are people on-the-go (laptops, handhelds, etc) and those who can't afford broadband. In both cases, WiFi is the way to go, since the client-side hardware is both portable and low-cost.
Costly? (Score:1, Insightful)
What about SFLan? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.archive.org/web/sflan.php/ [archive.org]
the already existing free wifi network in San Francisco.
I can see the popularity of google actually hurting the development of this grassroots project significantly; even though SFLan is adfree.
Another problem (Score:3, Interesting)
A really common type of home construction in San Francisco is stucco exteriors. The chicken wire used to support the stucco is going to interfere with reception.
Re:Another problem (Score:2)
Re:Another problem (Score:1)
Cost Per Household (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's round it up to twenty five dollars and realize what a bargain price that is! For less than a household usually pays for one month of service it is possible to roll out the infrastructure to support all the households in the city. Of course, you have a reoccuring monthly cost after that for the bandwidth the households will be using.
Within ten years they expect an additional seven million dollars in costs, bringing the total to fifteen million. Gee, how horrible to have to pay another 25 bucks or so per household within ten years for this service. It's past time for the cities in America to start providing low or no cost bandwidth as a service just as we have low cost water and sewage service. The ISP's have overcharged for their services for long enough.
Re:Cost Per Household (Score:1)
Re:Cost Per Household (Score:1)
I totally agree, and I just hope that in the long run, WiFi doesn't go the way of bottled water...
Re:Cost Per Household (Score:2)
Re:Cost Per Household (Score:1)
Re:Cost Per Household (Score:1)
And I thought my 8Mbit DSL at 45eur/month was expensive.
Btw. It seems like the euro symbol doesn't work on slashdot? (i can type it into comment field, but it doesn't appear in the preview)
Re:Cost Per Household (Score:2)
The cellular mobile network in San Francisco cost somewhere between 10X and 100X more, depending on which equipment you count as part of that network.
I would wager that that $15 million is in the neighborhood of, possibly less than, the cost of the trunked radio network used by San Francisco police and other public safety mobile units.
Even if there are significant problems to be fixed as Earthlink climbs the learning curve on operating a network like this, capex and opex looks lik
Re:[+] google (tagging beta) (Score:2)
Re:[+] google (tagging beta) (Score:2)
What's the point of this dumb thing? /. has decided to label it "beta", meaning "it doesn't do anythin
Alternatives to WiFi might short-circuit this (Score:1)
The slow project to put WiFi hotspots all over a single city seems likely to be surpassed in a relatively short time by other technologies. For example, I think that within a couple of years just about every business laptop user, at least, will want to have a cell phone Internet modem. Currently, Verizon and Sprint (maybe others) offer 144K connections, and this will (eventually) get
Philly Too (Score:3, Interesting)
Massive giveaway (Score:5, Insightful)
If they had just taxed 740,000 San Franciscans, they could have raised the $15 million Earthlink says is needed to build the network at a TOTAL cost of $20.27 per person.
That's $20. Not per month, not per year, but for 10 years of free wireless service. Considering the city's tax base works out to $7,100 per citizen per year (paid partly by businesses of course), that's quite a bargain.
The annual budget for San Francisco is about $5 billion [bizjournals.com]. According to the article, the initial cost to deploy this wireless network is estimated at $6 million to $8 million, or roughly 1/1000th of the city budget.
Earthlink has been granted a monopoly on city property and exemptions from certain regulations to build a citywide WiFi network. (Google is just leasing from them.) In exchange, they generously agree to rent the network for $20 per month to an average chump, or at some unspecified rate to Google, who will offer it for "free" to users.
Basic math: at $20 per sub per month, Earthlink only needs about 35,000 subscribers to recoup their worst-case build out cost within ONE YEAR.
If Google is paying them just a quarter of that, they would only need about 18 percent of the SF population, which is right around what they plan to get. Of course, after the first year they are minting money, since by their own estimate the maintence cost is about $1 million per year, plus customer support (only for paid customers surely) and billing.
In other words, the people of San Francisco will pay every single year the total cost to build the network. All this to avoid the evil of taxes and to experience the EFFICIENCY OF THE MARKET.
I am beginning to lose the fervent blind capitalist leanings of my youth because I live in San Francisco. Not surprising that this happened, but I am surprised at how.
Re:Massive giveaway (Score:2)
Re:Massive giveaway (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the government giving the money away, not corporations.
They take it by force and then hand it to a corporation. And then people complain about the corporations. The corps don't have guns.
Mostly.
Re:Massive giveaway (Score:2)
Re:Massive giveaway (Score:1)
Re:Massive giveaway (Score:1)
"Earthlink has been granted a monopoly on city property and exemptions from certain regulations to build a citywide WiFi network"
How is the granting of a monopoly by a govt agency 'capitalism'?
And from the article:
"..One allows subscribers to pay about $20 per month for a 1Mbps connection from EarthLink or another Internet service provider leasing capacity on the Wi-Fi network."
It sounds to me li
Re:Massive giveaway (Score:2)
Re:Massive giveaway (Score:2)
This is all true, since we live in a "perfect capitalist world."
Good luck (Score:4, Informative)
Where I live, in a small town in Idaho, there are three wireless networks in my range. Mine and two neighbors. There are half-a-dozen downtown and maybe two dozen more around town. NONE of them, except for mine and one neighbor's are secured at all. 90% of them have the SSID of "linksys" and are sitting on channel 6, stomping on each other.
Connectivity from even two houses down is abysmal and frequently you will see your connection hop from one to another, and I don't mean seamlessly, either.
How is Google/Earthlink going to handle all the people who already have WLANs? Are they just going to pick a channel like 1 or 11 and say "sorry, we're here with the strongest signal"? I'd be strongly tempted to switch my personal stuff to the 5 GHz band (Wifi-A), but that wouldn't be cheap as I'd have to refit a Tivo, two X-Boxes and 3 PCs.
WiFi is a freaking mess and can be a source of no end of issues. I wonder just how Google is going to deal with all that.
Inconceivable?! I don't think this word means... (Score:2)
You can add the ubiquitous coverage in airports, marinas, hotels, etc. that have been in place for years and years. There are hundreds if not thousands of network engineers that do this for a living and are good at their work.
Of course consumer equipment set up by idiots and designed for indoor use won't provide a citywide network.
You might need to change what channel you use on your tivo or whatnot. But you'd have to do that anyway
Re:Inconceivable?! I don't think this word means.. (Score:3, Informative)
Airports are closed environments and rarely will you find an overlapping network. This is why they actually work. I have no experience with marinas. I have lots with hotels, who go to great lenghts to install LOTS of overlapping access points to just plain drown out all the external signals from other hotels, truck stops, etc. They still have issues and wifi access at many hotels is a royal
Re:Inconceivable?! I don't think this word means.. (Score:2)
Every time this has come up lately someone has to chime in and say that it's impossible. Makes me crazy.
Re:Inconceivable?! I don't think this word means.. (Score:2)
Perhaps that is because some of us have tried.
802.11a/b/g was simply not designed for MANs. You can do a decent installation at an airport or your local Starbucks so that people can check their mail and browse the web. Smarter access points can mitigate this somewhat, and you can also get some way by carpet bombing the area with access points. But using a/b/g to saturate a large area with stable bandwidth
Re:Inconceivable?! I don't think this word means.. (Score:2)
I'll get on the horn and tell the dozens of cities with functioning municipal wifi to tear 'em out, they're not practical.
Too bad no-one lives in San Francisco (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Too bad no-one lives in San Francisco (Score:2)
obviously not anything anyone would want.
Re:Too bad no-one lives in San Francisco (Score:1)
I wonder how it will be while driving (Score:1)
Will it be seemlessly reconnecting with "15th pole Netgear", "3rd pole on 2nd Ave Linksys"?
If they will be using the same connection type that I have at home, forget it.
wireless internet is allways good (Score:1)
http://www.xgtechnology.com/ [xgtechnology.com]
http://www.codingheaven.net/ [codingheaven.net]
Maybe my MCOM shares will be worth something (Score:1)
Re:Maybe my MCOM shares will be worth something (Score:1)
the same lightpoles (the night/day solar sensor socket)
for free antenna power?
ricochet was neat but weird, with never enough repeaters
for hilly areas. come to think of it, plain dropout-ridden
cell networks here in frisco don't have enough juice.
and, we really do need to surf at the beach.
What would be really nice... (Score:2, Informative)
So??? (Score:1)
How much is that in Iraq War minutes???
What good is wireless access (Score:2)
Re:What good is wireless access (Score:2)
Re:What good is wireless access (Score:2)
Re:What good is wireless access (Score:2)
Re:What good is wireless access (Score:2)
Re:What good is wireless access (Score:2)
Frankly, I don't see what's so special about the Kurds. If saving lives were the goal, then it'd be far more efficient to just ship $10bn worth of food aid to Africa. If security were the goal, it'd be far more efficient to invade Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or Sudan. If regional stability were the goal, it'd be more efficient to invade Iran.
I'm no pacifist and I'm no dirty hippy. I'm all to aware that war is a part of human life. However, of all the wars we
Re:So??? (Score:2)
I'm glowing with anticipation (Score:2)
Hackers and tourists that's who!
I do have to wonder how the activist who don't like the idea of sprint and other phone companies putting in cell towers are reacting to the cit
Costs seem too low to me (Score:2)
Only $15 million? (Score:2)
As much as we love them, Google isn't doing this out of altruism. They expect this to be valuable. Why turn this important piece of infrastructure over to a private company so cheaply? Wouldn't it be better for the city to build it and control it? The city could run it without advertising, in rich and poor neighborhoods, witho
Re:Only $15 million? (Score:1)
If shifting the cost from you (for your water use) to someone else is your idea of efficient, then yes its very efficient.
By the way, can you provide an example of a privately run water system (not a govt granted monopoly), meaning there are multiple water companies that consumer
Re:San Francisco: A Truly "Progressive" City (Score:1)
Nowhere!