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Free WiFi Trend Continues
Palal writes "San Francisco is about to embark on a Free (or low cost) WiFi campaign with the mayor holding the reins, of course, in hopes of offering more low-income residents easier access to the Internet. Since San Francisco, unlike Philadelphia (previously covered on Slashdot for a similar project), is only 49 square miles, will this work here and can this be accomplished in a year as promised or is this just another political plot to get the Mayor re-elected?"
Everything is politics. That you can be sure of.
As far as it working, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. How will it conflict with Googles offering in the area?
So people can afford a $400 Dell cheapass PC, but can't spring for a $5 a month Internet dialup connection?
Oh wait, I forgot that its the fault of the people on the 'have' side of the 'Digital Divide' that the other people can't get online. Our village is in shambles! I need a hug.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
They should get local business to participate, they could share the cost, and make it more avilable to end users. That's what they do in my city. We've had free Wifi for over a year now, and they're constantly expanding the coverage. currently it's most of the city. See the following for details: http://www.fred-ezone.ca/index.php
I LIKE TOAST!!!
Yeah.. it is free until you are hooked.. Then they jack the prices up.
This must be a joke. Last I read, the median income for an SF resident was $160,000. I guess this means SF is looking out for those who are unfortunate enough to only earn $125,000 per year?
Too bad this didnt work here. And mostly because no one knew about the free service.As a resident of Orlando, I definitely didnt have a clue. I hope that in time it will be reconsidered. Too bad we canned this before it started catching on.
I still don't understand how they're going to cover that much area using current technology. The signal just isn't good enough. The only way I can see this being possible is if they use WiMax or something like that.
I don't think the vast majority of the population cares enough about WiFi to vote for a particular candidate based on that. Yes, San Francisco has more techies per square mile than most American cities, but I'd wager that this isn't a political move. Promising better schools, better roads, public transportation, less crime... those are political moves. Free WiFi, feasible or not, is NOT going to win votes. Most of the computer geeks are too busy playing CS in their parent's basements to hit the polls anyway. (not a troll, but based on my actual observations!)
Do these low-income residents have PCs with wireless capabilities? Or does the SF government give them to the poor residents? Don't you think they have higher priorities than free WiFi, maybe food/shelter/clothing/etc?
C:\>
Whether or not a politician's actions are based on his desire to get re-elected, I think it is imperative that we support initiatives that are what we would like. In the long run, giving credit for a certain thing to a politician is just part of how history works.
It's not the engineers who get the credit for bringing forth new technologies, it's the managers who do. So too do the politicians get credit for the work of their underlings. The main point is that the benefits are realized, not that someone who had a leadership role gets all the credit.
So yeah, let's get San Francisco unwired up (is that the right way to say it?)! If it works there, at a reasonable cost, maybe we can get initiatives moving in other big cities. The internet is one of those utilities that ought to be available to anyone looking for it. Putting the government in charge of distribution may not be the best choice, but it is a quick fix until private enterprise can compete.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Here's what concerns me about this. Offering free wireless is going to cost money (obviously). Is this really how low-income families would like that money to be spent? Wouldn't they prefer cheaper health care? Better accomodation? Nicer schools? Nicer communities? Did someone actually poll these people and say "we've got $XXXX to spend on you guys -- what do you want?" and the low-income people say "ooh free-wireles would make our lives so much better!"
I'm not trolling -- honest! I just wonder if this isn't, as the blurb suggests, more about PR for the mayor than actually helping people.
Usually when the big telcos/ISP's say that muni-wifi is anti-competitive, I tend to laugh. Why would SF need to do this as a city? NetZero already offers free internet access. Is that access not deemed sufficient or fast enough by the city? Do less affluent people really need to watch TV over their computers? One of the nice things about living in a major metropolitan area is that you can usually walk to the library or get there easily. I can see offering free access in the library, but to the whole city?
It would certianly look good on a mayors resume to say that he provided the whole city with internet access, but for some reason I have a feeling that the people who would benefit most from this are the upper middle class who already have wireless enable commputers. I don't see this doing a lot for those who can't already aford access themsleves.
sorry 'bout the mess...
FTFA: Free service for all is probably not in the cards, however. The mayor's statement on the TechConnect's Web site specifically calls for "affordable, wireless broadband access."
It may end up being low cost, but likely not free.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
By free access, as before, we may soon discover that their 'full access to The Internet' is blocking every port but 80.
When I saw the headline about the "Free WiFi trend", I foolishly assumed they were talking about actual free WiFi, like when a private resident or coffee shop opens up their 802.11g encryption so anybody in range is free to use it.
Sadly, they are talking about pre-billed, manditory WiFi, in which residents of a city are forced by the state to fund a WiFi connection with their taxes, whether they have better alternatives available or not.
Now it seems we need three different definitions for "Free":
1. Free as in "speech"
2. Free as in "beer"
3. Free as in "pay for it or go to jail"
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Low income families normally get ahold of a second-hand computer for far less that $400, more on the order of $20-50. Pop in a wireless card for $20 and they have the capability to file taxes, read email, download sweet linux images, and browse pr0n with the best of us! (for under $50). That is only 2 months of the cheapest broadband you can get.
D'oh! *smacks self on forehead* :-)
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
So people can afford a $400 Dell cheapass PC, but can't spring for a $5 a month Internet dialup connection?
Actually, certain organisations in Philadelphia give computers to the poor, but one of the main gripes was that the poor couldn't afford to do anything with them. Still the $5 dial up access is less than the $20 that Philly is going to offer for wireless, but if you take a look at the major ISP prices (Earthlink... AOL...) for dial up that it's about the same cost. Do you think the poor are going to hunt the net and search for a no-named mom and pop ISP that they haven't seen advertising on? They'll be luck to see a Net Zero add.
And personally, I'm all for a city wide Wifi because not only will I keep my Comcast cable connection, but I can afford a wireless connection for only $20 more so I can haul a laptop anywhere in the city and have an internet connection.
Hell if it works right I can haul a computer to Tatooed Mom's On South Street and drink a PBR and post to slashdot... Although that might get dangerous after the 6th one.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
All of these people are putting up free WiFi access with different levels of service. Some only allow web and mail, others are wide open and still others only provide custom content with no access to outside resources. Individually this is all fine and dandy. But, if WiFi is slated to be the "next internet" as a lot of people like to claim that it is, we need a lot more standardization than we have. Not to mention that there are a lot of people who are working very hard to try and stamp out these initiatives because it hurts or could hurt their businesses (telcos, cell phone providers, cable and satellite operators).
It's nice to see the free hotspots popping up here and there, but other than checking mail and looking at some web content, how useful is it? Why isn't there a national or global cooperative that would define the services that hotspots should offer in order to create a truly national or global network that parallels the internet? How do we keep the telcos and their ilk from ruining this? It's not like they're going to die overnight because landlines are still going to be necessary for several reasons, with bandwidth and reliability being the most important.
Keep the free WiFi coming, but really what does it all mean? It's not like this is becoming anything particularly useful yet.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Oh, no, actually leveraging the critical mass of the city into a more economical and reliable public service isn't the way for a mayor to get reelected. No, that's just politics. Like publishing stories about a candidate's qualifications and record, right in the middle of the election, when everyone is paying attention, trying to decide who to vote for. Sleazy political ploys.
No, reelections are legitimately based only on glowing recommendations from paid actors, speeches from pulpits subsidized with "faith-based initiaves", and strutting flight suits. That's our democracy: demediocracy.
--
make install -not war
Okay, so are there people who:
1) Can afford a $400 Dell
2) Can't afford Internet access
3) CAN AFFORD TO LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Don't kid yourself. While internet access is the lifeblood of any geek...
./ shouldn't make the mistake of thinking something is far more important than it really is.
geeks are a underwhelming minority of any general population, particularly among the uneducated (and one assumes that the uneducated largely have lower incomes than those who are educated and therefore concludes that low-income residents of a city would have an even smaller proportion of geeks than the city at large).
Far, far more people are interested in how much in taxes they pay each year. Offering free wifi would certainly have an impact on those figures.
How, then, does offering free wifi help him politically (other than for brownie points with an interest group here or there)?
I don't know who the mayor is or what his ideological positions are, and I also don't care. I just thought I'd point out that
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
Anonymous becuase it's not PC, but also it's true.
I work in this field. sometimes.
they have phone lines.
they have cars, despite public transit within 2 blocks of their subsizized apartments or half-price homes (by comparison I have no car, despite public transit within 8 blocks of my apartment)
and what infuriates me the most is that they have cable tv at 60-100/month
make your own judgements. i have.
they don't need subsidies or freebies. they need to decide what their priorities are, and then be left with the consequences of making those decisions.
enough already. this is not a useful kind of charity.
This can't be stated enough -- we already have massive problems with cell coverage in this city, I can walk two blocks from my current location and go from 6 bars of signal to 0 bars, dead. All carriers, all areas, if it ain't flat it has problems.
Two questions:
- how is coverage in this hilly city going to be addressed?
- how are you going to keep from stomping on existing networks (11 APs in range at work, 9 in range where I sit right now) like sflan?
The idea is good, but it's going to have some serious hurdles. But all in all we like Gavin, he tries to do good things.
I wonder what the definition of "low cost" becomes when the taxpayer subsidy is included in the cost figures.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
That's DEMOCRACY.
Now, as to whether the electorate really ought to resort to taxation to provide broadband access to the masses -- that's a policy matter I leave to the people of the Great State of California.
Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
San Francisco is a city with its fair share of problems. There is lots of economic disparity here. As other people have mentioned, you will not walk a block downtown without getting panhandled. The neighborhood I live in is fairly residential and yet there are still a couple of homeless people that park themselves in front of the local restaurants every evening.
What's more, contrary to popular perception about the Bay Area's liberality, a lot of the larger-scale economic disparity divides along racial lines. Neighborhoods like Bayview and Hunter's Point are predominantly black and in many ways they are almost completely neglected. Those areas were once Naval shipyards and that has been the excuse to lump them under Federal jurisdiction, not that of the City of San Francisco, which means they get passed up for a lot of urban development programs. Not to mention that the shipyards' legacy is a ton of environmental poisons -- Bayview has the highest instance of breast cancer in the Bay Area, if not California.
The only way you are going to start to help the economic underclass of San Francisco get ahead is to get them out of areas like this and into productive roles in society, and the way to do that is to provide them with opportunities. Free Internet access can help to do that. For example, it could make distance learning possible for single mothers and the disabled. It can give the elderly another lifeline to the outside world. It can provide communications facilities for not-for-profit organizations that conduct economic development programs. Hell, even letting kids surf the Web for free is one more thing that will keep them from running down Mission Street in packs, brawling and trading gunshots with each other.
Is there such a thing as a free lunch? No. Should the residents of San Francisco support programs that sound like they could benefit the residents of San Francisco, whether or not they think the mayor is a publicity whore? Sure. Why not?
Breakfast served all day!
I would tend to agree with you, but I've seen too many poor parents (my own among them) choose the unecessary (like mass quantities of drugs and alcohol) over the necessary (like clothes). Do you know what it's like to be getting a job at 10 years old just so you don't have to wear clothes from goodwill or handme downs? Have you ever eaten cereal from a sack without milk? I would hazard a guess and say "no".
Without the "haves" subsidizing my food, my housing, my education (both normal K-12 AND college), I never would have broken the cycle. I would have ended up just like them.
Is that a good thing? By some people's estimation, yes, because, while I was being provided for, there were 2 other people (my parents) who were abusing the system. They'd rather cut a kid like me off just to stop the worthless dregs of society than support those dregs and myself.
Frankly, I'm glad they aren't the ones making the rules. Without that help, I probably wouldn't have finished highschool, much less gone through college, or even think about plans for pursuing my masters.
I'll be the first to admit there are problems with welfare, subsidies, or other freebies. But without them, I'd probably be living in a run down trailer with two or three kids, a drug habit, empty 40's strewn all over the floor, a car up on blocks in my front yard and a job moving heavy things. Hooray for that.
I think he means that a person is a "right-wing nutjob" if they think pointing out that "tax funded" and "free" are not exactly the same thing is "insightful" as opposed to something most well informed people aready know. It is a trait of extremists of all walks fo life to think that the reason other people disagree with them is that they lack the "insight" of some bit of trivia or another.
Sadly, they are talking about pre-billed, manditory WiFi, in which residents of a city are forced by the state to fund a WiFi connection with their taxes, whether they have better alternatives available or not.
Network infrastructure (as opposed to services like webhosting, etc.) is extremely analogous to the highway system, including the lack of economic growth and monopolism that arises when said infrastructure is privately owned (think of the last mile of copper, and the 98% unused fiber that results from the baby bell's local monopolies, for example). Much of the FCC's efforts are a (failing) effort to mitigate this fundamental problem through regulation. Competative markets only exist, and work, when the underlying infrastructure is publicly owned. If we had privately owned highways, no little startup would even be able to drive to work, much less ship a product (or even receive parts to build their product) using their competitor's highway system.
San Francisco is doing exactly the right thing. There is a place for free market capitalism, and there is a place for public works. The Highway System, and Communications Infrastructure, are two examples of the latter.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
First off, SF isn't much into regulating public discourse/ nudity. Take the follow for example:
Gay (usually naked)Pride Parade
Usually Naked Castro Halloween
Bay to Breakers: Run (naked) across the City!
Folsom Street Fair: Get you S&M right here. We got everything and we are not afraid to use it... In public!
Second, even if there is federal and state laws on screening out certain content, San Francisco isn't one to follow them (see: Medical Pot, Gay Marriage).
And finally, Gavin (the mayor) is a now a single man. He wants his free p0rn as much as the next guy...