Details on San Francisco's Free Wifi

FrenchSilk writes to mention that the San Francisco Chronicle has more details on the previously discussed Earthlink/Google municipal wifi project. The paper confirms that free access will be free to everyone, with higher bandwidth and more reliable tiers also available. The article touches on a number of related subjects, such as security, reliability, and privacy. From the article: "Recognizing the concerns expressed by electronic privacy advocates and community members, the City has negotiated an Agreement that addresses the privacy needs of our residents, negotiating terms stronger than any other City and incorporating protections that go far beyond what federal, state or local law requires. EarthLink and the provider of the free service will be required to fully disclose their privacy policy. This ensures that all users are aware of the privacy policies."

Comments

Wifi

[JoshJ]

But does it run on Linux? All joking aside, the service seems pretty decent for a free service (300 Kbps), although $21.95 for a 1 Mbps service is a bit under the norm, but possibly a better deal than whatever internet providers exist in SF now- especially considering the mobility of it. The $12.95 discount for low-income residents makes me go "WTF" though- if your family is "low-income" by the conventional measure (poverty line) you probably shouldn't be spending money on wi-fi. I detect political hijinks. I wonder how the service is going to know whether each person is "free" or "paid", and how long it'll be before that gets hacked.
I do like the following things, though: Network neutrality. The City has required that EarthLink adhere to the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) principles of internet freedom to address any potential for abuse of consumers or retail service providers. Non exclusivity: The agreement provides access to the City's right of way and facilities on a competitively neutral and non discriminatory basis. Nothing will prevent additional Wi-Fi providers from deploying similar networks should they desire to do so. Open Access: The agreement ensures that all internet service providers, including our local businesses, nonprofits and other organizations, will be able to provide commercial services without fear of a local monopoly. The City is not granting an exclusive franchise; rather, the City has negotiated an Agreement that provides the foundation for competition.

Re:Wifi

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually $21.95 is for symmetric 1Mbps. It's quite unusual to pay that little for 1Mpbs upload capacity, at least around SF.

Of course, these are early reports, so I'll believe that when I see it.

As far as the system knowing whether you've paid, that'll probably work much like it does at Starbucks or wherever. The difference here is that your credentials will be used to adjust some rate-limiting on a router somewhere I guess.

Re:Wifi

[fiddlesticks]

"if your family is "low-income" by the conventional measure (poverty line) you probably shouldn't be spending money on wi-fi"

Care to share with us anything else that you think people on low incomes shouldn't be spending money on?

Books? Holidays? Clothes?

On the other hand, perhaps subsidising people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to go online is a good thing. Maybe that way they'll, you know, learn stuff/ get jobs/ have fun - all the things everyone else uses the Net for.

Oh, right, this is /. The market will take care of it, riiiight?

Clarification

[goldspider]

When you say "free", do you mean:

1. Free as in beer.
2. Free as in speech.
or
3. Free as in taxpayer-subsidized?

Re:Clarification

[supervillainsf]

I guess you didn't rtfa. Here is the relevant info:

Fees paid to the City:
$600,000 in guaranteed payments for access to the City's right of way.
An estimated $40,000 per year for the use of City facilities (street light poles);
A 5% share of all gross access revenues, estimated to generate $300,000 per year, depending on paying subscriber uptake. These funds may be used to fund computer and other equipment, training and self-help programs and community relevant content development.

So I guess the answer is free as in Earthlink thinks that between advertising and subscribers to the 1Mbps tier, the service will produce enough profit to far out weigh the costs. And, if it doesn't, i'm sure Earthlink will find some way around the privacy clause and start selling personal info on top of the huge amount of marketing that we are bound to put up with for access.

Privacy "agreement"

[Anonymous Coward]

EarthLink will not share protected personal information (such as name, address, phone number, financial and medical profiles, and credit card information) without the consent of the user, except in the following cases:

To third party suppliers, provided that users may opt out of receiving marketing communications.

To law enforcement with court-ordered documentation for a criminal or national security investigation

In response to a civil legal demand, but only after reasonable prior notice to the user.

EarthLink shall provide Subscribers an opportunity to opt out of EarthLink's use of location information (i.e., information about the location of the user's computer or other device that is accessing the network) EarthLink shall retain Location Information no longer than 60 days.

Sign-in to the free service will require only minimal information, mainly for the purpose of protecting the network from abuse by "robot software" and other malicious programs.

Read carefully folks!

More implementation details come out...

[inviolet]

"Recognizing the concerns expressed by electronic privacy advocates and community members, the City has negotiated an Agreement that addresses the privacy needs of our residents, negotiating terms stronger than any other City and incorporating protections that go far beyond what federal, state or local law requires. EarthLink and the provider of the free service will be required to fully disclose their privacy policy.

Earthlink guarantees your privacy by tossing 95% of your emails. Nobody will be able to reconstruct your conversations.

And your security is insured by having 30% of your packets dropped. This has been scientifically proven to reduce probing attacks by 30%.

Earthlink, Google, Motorola and Tropos Networks

[namityadav]

If I remember correctly, Google will manage the free 300-kilobits-per-second Wi-Fi service, EarthLink will offer the faster premium service (1mbps and above), and Motorola and Tropos will provide the hardware / software for the mesh with the wireless service running at 2.4GHz and the mesh backbone at 5.8GHz

VOIP?

[popo]

So, when do the telecom companies start bribing city officials to kill this project?
Free citywide Wifi would seem to me to be a deathblow for anyone currently selling
dialtone. Won't everyone just start using VOIP?

And just wait until VOIP enabled mobile handsets become commonplace...

Re:Low Income

[kfg]

if people really are living with relatively low incomes, whatever that may be, they shouldn't be spending it on increasing their internet experience, nor should they be incited to by the lower cost.

That's right, they should be spending it on Slim Jims, beer and lottery tickets, like the good old days.

We'll have none of this tapping into a world of information, education, free software, looking for work, looking for a better place to live, access to cheap delivered goods instead of being stuck getting everything from the low income neighborhood ripoff joint, effective communication with each other across town or across the globe without having to support a landline/cell contract, etc. Think of the children, man!

Especially at a lower cost than what they're paying now for inferior service. Jeeeezus Christ, where's the economic sense in that? Do you know what will happen to the nation's economy if the mass of low income people start being incited to buy things because they cost less?

It'll collapse, that's what it'll do. We depend on them to buy Kellog's Frosted Flakes instead of Corn Meal and sugar, Microsoft Windows instead of downloading Ubuntu, emergency room visits for flu instead of a reasonably priced GP down the block, blockbuster movies instead of community theater.

Just who do they think they are determining their own priorities anyway? The whole point of having low income people around is so that higher income people can tell them how they should be living, innit? Next thing ya know they'll start thinking they might like an afternoon at the art museum or something. We'd have to rub shoulders with them or something if we allowed that sort of thing; when they should be putting in that sixteenth hour at work, dammit. They obviously need the three bucks.

No, the purpose of low income people is to pick oranges/cotton to provide tax dollars to provide museums and ubiquitous WiFi for high income people.

Fucking peasants are revolting.

Next week if you're not careful.

KFG

Re:It's sad.

[Overzeetop]

Fear not, all of these 15M/2M FTTP guys on /. are in the cherry picked areas of the country. Most of the US is still on dialup. I define most as "more than 50% of landmass," and I'd bet a dollar that it's closer to 70-80% of landmass, but I'm not going to try and look it up.

Until just two years ago, I was ten miles from a major university with several GB/s of bandwidth (may be tens of GB, for all I know) and when I called the local telco and cableco inquiring about "high speed internet" they were excited to tell me that they had high speed internet - they'd just upgraded more than half of their modem pool to 56kb! By the time I left there, they had a 768/128kb ADSL that I badgered them into extending to my house (about 20,000 ft from the CO), where I got 680/65kb. And a bargain at $45/mo. Note that this is not some university in the middle of nowhere, as we're less than 250 miles from Washington, D.C. Now I'm "in town" and can get better DSL, or cable if I don't mind being down for 10-15% of the time (fuck you Adephia). Ten years ago they were all going to have 10bT to the houses thanks to the University, but I can only guess that Adelphia and Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) squashed that pretty quickly.