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San Fran Mayor Declares Wireless for All
arvind s. grover writes "San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom stated yesterday in his state of the city address that every San Francisco resident will have free wireless internet access. They don't seem to have much set up yet, and no proposal was laid out for the installation of access points in every nook and cranny of the city. I wonder what vendor is going to get that contract...You might be better off finding a wireless node using NodeDB or this oddly-titled site: cheesebikini."
I mean, the wireless isn't "free", taxdollars are paying for it. Unlike private solutions, people who don't use it will still have to pay for it. I'm not quite sure I like the government providing a non-essential service when there are already alternatives. Now the question is, does it mean increased revenue from tourism, better reputation, etc counterbalance the costs of the wireless access points/maintenance? Will some prosumers even want to use this service(as it may not be as reliable)? TFA was short on details, I'm willing to bet the mayor is trying to get re-elected, so he probably hasn't answered any of these questions yet.
Monstar L
I know it's OT, but go look at news.google.com. "Spitzer's iron wrist shits to music industry" is one of the headlines under entertainment. There's an article about the San Fran Mayor on there too btw.
"We will not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free wireless Internet service,"
"He said the city had already made free WiFi service available at Union Square, a central shopping and tourist hub"
So, everyone run down to the chopping center and get your free wifi. Problem solved.
Mark
My girlfriend is interning at Berkeley Mental Health. You'd be suprised how many homeless people have web pages or at least email addresses.
sky
I wonder what the local ISPs think about this. If it's wrong for microsoft to include a free web browser, is it wrong for the government to provide free internet access?
I have never been to San Fran myself, but my dad has on numerous occasions. And from his stories, the terrain in SF is "pretty hilly" to say the least. I have had problems at home with my wireless sometimes reaching from one floor to another without messing around with the antenae all the time. It seems like they're going to need a heck of a lot of repeaters/ap's for this to work out at all in that terrain.
Wouldn't it be cheaper just to run hard-wired fiber into every building, and drop off a linksys wireless router to everyone? Probably not really, but it sure seems like it is going to be very difficult to get a good wireless network in that terrain.
is there an election coming up in SF that this guy is trying to get votes for?
That's because in Berkeley, a ton of the 'homeless' people are just kids who thought it would be awesome to 'hang out in Berkeley all day and bum money for food.'
I would guess that Berkeley has one of the lowest average ages for homeless people. I always enjoy walking down Telegraph, and having kids with dreadlocks come up, and ask for food- while flashing teeth so straight, that his parents are probably still paying the orthodontic bills. These kids hang out with their Che Guevara t-shirts, and talk about how 'everything should be free'. But aren't willing to do anything other than ask for handouts.
Also, while sitting around in Davis CA, I've watch the same 'homeless' kids talk about going back to Berkeley, because they can earn a few hundred bucks on Saturdays. (In Davis, they generally hang out in front of Baskin Robbins, Chipotle, or Newsbeat). Of course after hearing them say this- the proceed to ask me for money 'for food'.
I really hate those kids...
No reason to lie.
All the links in the story end in ".nyud.net:8090", in an attempt to use Coral. The problem is, that is appended after everything else, which makes it irrelevant.
r i?what evere r.nyud.net: 8090
Remember, its:
http://hostname.com.nyud.net:8090/rest/of/u
not
http://hostname.com/rest/of/uri?whatev
Strangely enough, in this case all the links seem to work faster than their coral counterparts.
Fixed coral links:
Reuters story
NodeDB
cheesebikini
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
... is the real alternative sucks.
Citys aren't doing this to squeeze out private companys that want to offer service to everyone.
Cities aren't even competing with companies that want to offer service to everyone making above 30,000 $ a year, or to neigherborhoods where everyone owns their home.
Cities are looking at getting into providing access because the companies in their areas are generally targeting the top 5% of the market only. They are tired of dealing with companies that want to wire broadband only to people making 200,000 $ a year plus, and living in sufficiently large groups of interested users.
My city dropped plans to create a utilities model wireless service when the local Bell brought in a multi-tiered ADSL system that swiftly ended up competeing with local cable internet. Before that, we'd seen such problems as a small high speed provider that wanted to connect up just a few new streets, only to see the economic downturn hit, the local developers put off building houses on those streets, and their investmwent go down the toilet.
While I'm qute happy that we have some competitive interest in this area and didn't end up setting up a new local utility, we waited about 4 years for the situation to resolve itself. 4 years of businesses that weren't interested in profit margens of less than 15%, and didn't recognize when they were taking bigger risks by cherry-picking than they would have by trying to provide service to the majority.
Who is John Cabal?
I'm guessing that Pacific Bell already owns most of the wired infrastructure, and I'm not that sure it would be cost efficient to build and maintain a second wired infrastructure.
San Francisco's advantage is that it's such a small big city. A population of 776,773 and an area of 47 square miles yields a density of 16,526 persons per square mile. I have no idea how they plan to do this, but if they spent $20,000 per square mile for wireless equipment*, that's less than $1,000,000. Outdoor WAPs can be had for as little as $330 or inexpensive consumer routers can be adapted/ruggedized with tupperware.
So, your point is a good one. The City could build out a wireless infrastructure fairly cheaply, and leave the actual operation to a private contractor.
*The number of $20,000 was conveniently pulled out of my ass, and left no marks fortunately. I don't see how this could go higher than $100,000/sq. mi. if they use off the shelf equipment, though, so that's an infrastructure cost of $5 million. Peanuts! This is the sort of thing that attracts business and tourism, so I have no doubt it could pay for itself.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
How many spammers live in San Francisco? How many will move there?
Great question and I have more.
1. What are the restrictions on the internet access? (Bandwidth limits, censorship, ect.)
2. What will be the final cost to taxpayers?
3. How will this "free" service affect the local broadband providers?
Now for the rant.
Call me paranoid but I don't trust internet access provided by the government. 1984 would always be in the back of my mind when I am looking for information (pron) on the internet.
Now for cost. Who exactly will be using this service? The answer is people with computers. This is not in any way helping the homeless. If you have a wireless enabled computer you can probally afford internet access. Since this is publicly funded everyone who pays taxes will be paying for it. This includes those making minimum wage just trying to survive.
I'm sure when asked the Mayor will say that people don't have to use this service. They can always pay for internet access but why would you want to do that when I am giving it to you for "free?" I have a feeling that this government provided service will drive out private alternatives. So much for choice.
Most of them seem to be disaffected teenagers who have temporarily run away from home or something along those lines. And sometimes they aren't actually homeless at all, they just panhandle because they think it's cool (no, I'm not kidding).
Ah well, the nice things about Cambridge more than make up for some of its eccentricities. College towns with rampant communist subcultures are magnets for this sort of thing (makes you realize what would happen if an entire society decided to depend on other peoples handouts and decided to stop doing productive work).
There is a REASON governments want entire population bases bathed in specific types of EM radiation.
You stupid fucks.
I'm almost looking forward to watching you all get liquidated as the temperature continues to rise. Have you all had your mercury-laced flu shots yet? Perhaps you ought to eat another carb and sugar-rich blitz of fast food and wash it down with a refreshing diet soda complete with brain melting sweeteners. Heck, just settle down in front of your CRT's tuned to hypnotically open your minds for the insertion of socially damaging messages! --You know, to enhance your ability to think (vote) clearly.
MAN, I'm feeling grouchy today! I've really been noticing recently the millions of morons out there molding reality with their thoughtless actions, and it's annoying the PISS out of me.
The Christian Right, under Bush, WANTS the apocalypse to come. This is why they want all the Jews in Israel and all the Moslems out and they are giving them 10 billion bucks a year to help make it happen. Bush is a fucking born again right wing Christian lunatic, and this is not a joke.
But yeah, wireless sure is 'cool' man. Hope my city installs a fucking microwave tower every three hundred meters and that all my neighbors install microwave generators in every nook and cranny so that I cannot escape being exposed to the mass brain-dulling even when I choose not to participate in the wonders of technology.
When you are gurgling in painful death throws under the heel of the impending police state, I hope you'll remember my bitching and feel appropriately stupid.
-FL