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San Fran Mayor Declares Wireless for All

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the throwing-down-the-gauntlet dept.

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."

16 of 272 comments (clear)

  1. How...? by Poleris · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is this mayor going to pay for this.

    1. Re:How...? by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, the taxpayers will. The mayor's friends will get the contracts though.

    2. Re:How...? by bigman2003 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And how many people who live in the city of San Francisco cannot afford a computer?

      The median income is $74,000 per year.

      San Francisco is a fairly expensive place to live, there are not a lot of poor people there. I'm sure they are only concerned with the people who actually have an address- not homeless people, who don't pay taxes, or vote.

      Then again- cities spend a lot of money on streets, traffic lights, etc. And not everyone has a car...

      --
      No reason to lie.
  2. Looks like another tax hike ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ah socialism, take from the upper middle class and give to the lower middle class

  3. Good idea...but... by deanj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Good idea and San Francisco is a great place to visit, but shouldn't they do something to help the unemployed and homeless in that town? And when I say "help the homeless", I mean REALLY help them, like get them a place to live and a way to make a buck, not just handouts, which they've done in the past.

    1. Re:Good idea...but... by pyrrhonist · · Score: 5, Funny
      Good idea and San Francisco is a great place to visit, but shouldn't they do something to help the unemployed and homeless in that town?

      What do mean? The Mayor gave them free WiFi! FREE!
      They don't even need the cardboard sign that says, "Will work for bandwidth", anymore.

      Seriously, what more do they need?

      </SATIRE>

      --
      Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
    2. Re:Good idea...but... by seudafed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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

    3. Re:Good idea...but... by e40 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Federal social services have been cut, steadily, since the early 80's, started by Reagan. In the 80's there was a flood of homeless into the street from mental institutions. Anyone in Berkeley in the 80's could tell that most of the people on the street were plain nuts and needed full-time help.

      Berkeley and SF are tolerant places. The cops don't throw them in jail (or beat them and tell them to get out of town). Many places across the US are very intolerant of homeless people, and will run them out of town.

      The weather is good most of the year (not too cold, little rain).

      Put all these factors together, and you get a recipe for attracting homeless people from all over the country.

      It's not an SF problem, it's a US problem. The US should do something about this.

    4. Re:Good idea...but... by ergo98 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The best way to help the least fortunate is often by increasing the size of the economic pie - basically by making the middle class richer by encouraging economic commerce and innovation (cue naïve sarcastic remarks about Reagan's trickle down economics. Note, however, that I'm talking about the middle class rather than the rich. Furthermore, I am not speaking about tax cuts, but rather programs or initiatives that expand the economy, such as encouraging technological growth). Perhaps the premise behind free wireless is that it will lead to a slew of new programs and services in the San Francisco area that will lead to a lot of taxable commerce - tax revenue that can then be used to provide mental health support for some of the homeless. The most effective route to a goal isn't always the most direct.

      BTW: An enjoyable read for the armchair economist is the very enlightening The Birth of Plenty : How the Prosperity of the Modern World was Created. It basically covers why some countries achieved such prosperity (hint - it isn't that they stole it from the poor countries).

  4. COOL! by ferrellcat · · Score: 5, Funny

    I guess that means that THIS guy will finally get online! http://www.dkrupa.com/comics/28.jpg

  5. Just one question by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How many spammers live in San Francisco? How many will move there?

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  6. Anti-competitive? by Spykk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  7. um, it's not free as in beer nor as in speech by humanerror · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We already have a decent, FREE, and fast wireless network in The City: SFLan.org.

    Do you really want to be bound by the government's TOS, for a service "sold" as free that you are in fact paying for, whether you use it or not?

    Of course, using public money for questionable ends is nothing new... but dear Gavin already invests far too much of our money waging war on the poor (no, not on poverty... on the poor).

    --
    "We're an apex predator with the fecundity of a base level herbivore... We're a virus with shoes..." RazorJAK
  8. Re:Is this necessarily a good thing? by AndroidCat · · Score: 5, Interesting
    What kind of access controls will there be? Can any kind of abuser (spam, DDoS, port-scan, trojaned zombie, etc) keep connecting if (ever) disconnected? Will they block some ports like 25? What if someone sucks down most of the bandwidth in the neighbourhood? Can I run servers with dynamic DNS? Who do I report a DDoS from SF space to?

    If they don't manage it, the rest of the Internet might just throw the San Francisco wireless IP range into a "blackhole at the firewall" list in self-defence. And if SF taxpayers can't connect to anyone, who do they call at "SanFran Tech Support" to complain?

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  9. Re:Is this necessarily a good thing? by k98sven · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's infrastructure. You could say the same thing about highways too.

    It's very, very difficult to calculate the benefits of this, and really of any infrastructure investment.
    (as far as I understand, there are no good models for this. Building roads is still mostly a political decision.)

    But there are lots of things which conciveably balance the costs, most notably increased business productivity, competition and growth, and increased property value (which generates returns though property tax).

    So, yeah, it's political.. but it doesn't automatically mean it's not economically justified. But whether it is or not is pure speculation. There's no way to tell in the short run.

  10. Re:Is this necessarily a good thing? by autarkeia · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The mayor is *not* trying to get re-elected. The mayor, in fact, is only in the first year of his 4-year term, and by just about any San Franciscan's account he has done nothing but kicked ass and mopped up the streets afterwards. He has completely revamped the budget, took a voluntary pay cut, reorganized the police and fire departments, cracked down on unsolved murders and crime, led the nation on human rights and gay marriage issues, and tackled San Francisco's biggest issue-- homelessness-- with a multidisciplinary team that seems to actually be working.

    Say whatever you want to about Gavin Newsom, but he has been a major boon to San Francisco at a time when it's down. The WiFi thing of course could cost a lot of money, but imagine the potential benefits of pervasive, citywide, free access.