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SF Wifi More Than Flipping a Switch
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."
Or am I mischaracterizing Google's "free service" business plan?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
While I am all for the spread of citywide wireless networking, I would also like to point out there are are still many places here in the U.S. that cannot even get Broadband in any way, shape, or form. I grew up in such an area near Cooperstown, NY. I am glad to see such civic projects brought to you by Google, but I would hope that someday they might reach out to the rural people as they have only dialup. It would also be nice to see this plan implemented elsewhere as well, like Albany, NY...Boston, NYC and the like. Ah well.
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
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.
Not going to happen given how the FCC manages spectrum and transmission power.
$15 million is not a lot. The thrust of the article seems to be skepticism that it can be pulled off for so cheap, in fact.
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. 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.
It's a tourist attraction. What is 90% of the bay area going to do, drive 50 miles from San Jose to San Francisco to participate in the Google revolution?