Using the fiber net now as the backhaul is correct but the Google/Earthlink plan doesn’t even ask for it which leads many to believe there is some ulterior motive. 60% of it has been sitting there dark for three years.

Yes, the most obvious plan is for a hybrid system that is what many tech professionals have been asking for since the public hearings started. There have been 12 since. The same message goes out for using the fiber net as the backhaul and expand using WiFi now and as the city does its sewer renovations and above-wire undergrounding to start FTTP installations (the hardware will be much cheaper by then) with additional support for wireless as needed.

But, this Google/Earthlink plan doesn’t even look to the future. It is simply a quick install of an access point over the entire city that is rife with terrain and building issues that are not taken into account.

If the rest of the city were allowed some involvement from the beginning instead of this being behind closed doors, we would definitely have a different outcome.

There are many critics of the so-called critics abound. The so-called critics are not that. They are the tech professionals of this city that are in abundance unlike other major capital projects like fresh water, waste water, electricity, etc. There is plenty of expertise to go around. This is not rocket-science especially when there is significant wireless transmission existing already.

I am not being naive about this. Get a hybrid system going. There will be people who already can afford the hardware for fiber installs. Let them pay for it out of their pockets but make fiber access available. For those who can’t afford it now, build out a WiFi network on top of the fiber net but spread the wealth and allow competition among many WiFi vendors that could or would provide WiFi access plugged into our backhaul. Get the variety which offers plenty of test cases; contracts would be short-term so customizing the network as more FTTP moves in and wireless hardware becomes obsolete is best. Let the WiFi companies deal with that obsolescence. Maintain taxpayer-owned assets, the fiber net.

This is a very fluid situation and time in wireless technology now. We have seen companies like Buffalo Tech get sued by the Australian government over 802.11a & g on patent infringement. Intel owns 802.11n.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20061116/001301.shtml
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6137372.html

This is no time to secure ownership of white elephants.

Right now, Google has only your search data, maybe email or IM (gmail), maybe your image or video interests, but it doesn’t know everything you do.

Google can cement their ownership of the AdSense marketplace by owning data about everything you do.

In the Web 1.0 world, Microsoft owned your machine. That was the unnetworked world, where owning everything you did on the desktop was most important. Eventually, after 15 years of this, they were sued for monopolistic practices under antitrust law in the US and Europe.

In the Web 2.0 world, Google owns your Attention Data. It’s the most important thing in the networked, online world.

By partnering with all the wifi providers, Google gets access to a much richer cache of Attention Data, than they have with just search and your visits to their websites and services. Now, they have everything.

How long, as Google spreads through the ecosystem, before people realize this (5 or 10 years?) and then, how long ’til they are sued under antitrust law? And then, how long until the world changes again, and Attention Data isn’t most important, but something else is, and the antitrust suit is happening, but it doesn’t matter, because Google has made their money over 20 years, left SF and other cities in the dust, and is slowly imploding as Microsoft is now?

We are just at the beginning, and SF is giving away what, $500 million in Attention Data? Maybe billions of $$$$ in Attention Data, for almost free in comparison to it’s value, over the next 16 years.

Besides the direct users of the service, who will likely have mediocre service at some parts of the day, or whatever, though Google will have incentive to make the networks faster.. so my guess is the service won’t be that bad. The real travesty here is that SF, and all the other municipalities, don’t even know what they are really delivering for essentially “free” is data they should have control over, and rights to sell, aggregated with individual users personal information attached, in the AdSense marketplace, for it’s true value.

anna

In some Cities, fiber was built out with the help of the Cable companies money. In Denver the City is stuck with a non-compete clause where they are not allowed to offer ISP services to consumers that could compete with the Cable companies product. Could be the reason why in SF they can’t resell it to EarthLink.

If the fiber is available for EarthLink/Google and is lit then I would imagine they will be negotiating to have access to it. They need backhaul…Rates on fiber are fairly standard. If the fiber is dark then
it’s probably too expensive to use for a Muni-WiFi build.

Unfortunately, Bruce, fiber is not mobile. I can’t plug into fiber using my mobile device on the go. No one is proposing Muni-WiFi is going to compete with fiber on speeds.
Muni-WiFi fills a short term gap for fixed access, until the City or a private company offers an alternative product cheaper. Approx. 30 % of residents of SF do not use broadband today. Some for financial reasons, others because of choice. Muni-WiFi may be good enough for them. One account you can use mobile and fixed all around town.

On the wireless front, most Municipal projects business cases are based on 10+yrs usefulness of the product; roads, water projects, bridges etc. When it comes to new technology like Muni-Wireless and competition from 3G, WiMax shortly, LTE, then I recommend that large Cities stay well out of the business. Corpus Christi recognized this one. Others will follow. It’s not that they can’t do it, it’s just that they probably have more pressing issues to deal with than maintaining a large network.

Smaller cities like St.Cloud, FL can be successful as they will not have the volume issues a SF will have. It’s a long story…but equipment to handle 20,000 customers is much cheaper, as the market for these devices is a lot larger than the big stuff. Since less people buy the bigger stuff…less demand if you will….it’s expensive, very expensive.

Can you imagine the arguments of when to upgrade the network in SF City Hall, if the City owned it? By the time they get around to agreeing to invest in an upgrade, many users will have churned off.

I doubt the pro-Muni owned SF Muni-WiFi contingent fully understand what it costs to maintain a large subscriber based system. You have to market it, even if it is free, you have tons of back office, core network equipment, that needs to be maintained and upgraded more often than the radios on the street, and you need a call center to be able to handle large volumes of calls. A Muni the size of SF would have to outsource the maintenance, which gets you right back into the whole ‚Äúwho is in control” issue. There are many many horror stories of Muni’s having to pay exorbitant fees for simple change controls with outsourced service providers. Contrary to many lawyers thinking that they can predict all potential changes and can lock it down in legalese, you can‚Äôt.

Call centers. As much as the integrators will tell you they can support large consumer networks (millions of users) they generally don’t. They support large Enterprise networks, not consumer ones. Big difference! Since call centers are a very political issue here in the US, the cost of a US based call center to support a partially free based consumer broadband access system is financially and politically suicide.

People also forget that you will have to advertise this network. The free gig will only get you play for a little while. Then you will have to pay some serious advertising dollars to drive up subscription and offer specials to reduce churn. Keep in mind WiMax, 3G, and others are going to compete and challenge the competitive advantage of Muni-WiFi. You will have to defend it. Can you imagine City Hall funding a $3 – $5million dollar advertising campaign for a partially free network?

As far as the speeds go…..you seem to have forgotten about competition, or at least don’t trust it. Ultimately in the Mobile world, real time Video experience is the killer app and most likely the unique advantage that Muni-WiFi has over 3G and WiMax. The Muni-WiFi operators out there will be exploiting this aspect…and Video requires speed, hence your “minimum speeds” will be ok. Last I checked Google is still influential, they will make darn sure that the speeds increase appropriately over time to deliver their cool apps.

Privacy. A lot of talk on this one. All I can say is chill out. EarthLink has a long history of defending privacy, even taking on the NSA years back. Other ISP’s will join the network, if you don’t like EarthLink’s policies choose another ISP, it’s an open network. However, if you want to take advantage of location based services then you will have to give in on privacy for it to be useful.

Esme & Sascha let’s get real here, opt out clauses are just paper. Rather than looking for legal ways to protect your privacy, get smarter. You are already doing it. The “system” only knows what you put in to it. Like in life you have your real name and then your “bar name” or internet profile. Start using your “bar name”. If you are doing something illegal…stop it. If you are paranoid about your information…stop giving out so much.

As Greg says we don’t know all the details. This looks like a really good deal for SF. 2 major companies and a critically important City putting it on the line to build a world class network free for its citizens. No other city in the world has this deal.

It gets the city what it wants without being tied up in tons of “anchor tenancy” issues. De-railing this project now will set back SF 2yrs+ on Muni-WiFi.
That would be a crying shame and a reason to move!

Actually, if you have been following it, Earthlink asked for 750 but then Google wants to piggy-back 1000 more.

Ultimately, this all can be easily solved if the city just adopts a municipally-owned model using its own fiber network and then contracts with others to provide last mile services. It doesn’t even need to be with just one company. This way the city as it continues its undergrounding in outlying neighborhoods can replace the WiFi with direct fiber-to-the-premises.

WiFi will not be with us in its current form forever. WiMax or pre-N (802.11n) hasn’t even been approved by the FCC yet. By the time it is, there will be another innovation and still yet another. This is just the beginning and to lock the residents into something that will change in six months and then six months again is ludicrous.

To think that this system will serve the city over the next 16 years in its current form without a reasonable sense of update or complete upgrade is really being naive.

Plus, why should we settle for arguments of speed at 1 megabits per second when we could be getting well over a minimum of 4 mb/s per user tied into a fiber network with wireless access points at the last mile? We all know technology is only going to become more innovative and exponential very soon that will require far more bandwidth. Why not prepare for the jump to the future with as much bandwidth as possible?

San Franciscans could use their own fiber network that is already installed.
Why isn’t this on the table?

Yes, let’s look deeper than those “headline-grabbing parts” which are really the elements that take away rather than giving to the residents of San Francisco.

Let’s be real here.
San Francisco has been fleeced more often than not when it comes to giving away municipal services to private enterprises or outsourcing. Using your favorite search engine, please check this out for yourself. Public-private partnerships are good when the public doesn’t give up its self-determination and control over the partnership. I am not saying there shouldn’t be a free-market to provide such services but there also should be good competition of these essential services and where there is none that the citizens retain control over their destiny.

Electricity: SF owns its own hydro-electric plant caused by the O’Shaughnessy Dam of the Hetch-Hetchy Valley in the Sierra Mountains. But, because of a surreptitiously agreed to contract with PG&E, it is not allowed to provide that FREE power to its residents but only city facilities. This has been going on for over 90 years despite federal law, the Raker Act of 1913. Ratepayers have been gouged for decades without the ability for the City to break free. PG&E has spent millions, if not, billions of taxpayer dollars to prevent city after city from self-determination in creating public municipally-owned power and districts as recently as this past year in Davis, CA. Also, know that post-Enron, California taxpayers bailed PG&E out of bankruptcy at a cost of $8 billion that was reserved to repair every public school in the state. The taxpayers got nothing back for that favor except increases in rates, fires in the power substations and transformers exploding under people’s feet in high traffic areas.

Telephone: We all know the monopoly situation of the 60′s-70′s with AT&T and now they are back. With regards to Internet access, the state just passed a law allowing telephone companies to push television and other media programming through their DSL networks using franchise agreements made with the state. CA state legislature has taken away the rights of local municipalities to self-determine what services it wants in their locale without regulation. This also cut out the powerful cable industry that is obliged by regulation under federal rule.

Cable: SF has been dealing with this debacle for decades, too. The steering wheel has been handed over to company after company without any ability for the city to make its own determination because of franchise agreements. The cable network has changed hands at least three times in the past 20 years without public input. Plus, city officials have been forced to extending their franchise agreements. The city has the right to public input under powerful Sunshine laws but unscrupulous dealing have left the residents of SF out in the cold with high prices for minimum service and horrible customer support as reported.

Fiber: WE OWN IT! Yes, San Francisco has a large bundle of unused fiber. How much could be used to deliver the entire city with fiber-to-the-premises? From what professionals have said, about 8-10 pairs of strands. From testimony in hearing, that is about 1/20th of the total bundle. We own it, its all installed and with ongoing undergrounding of electrical wires and sewer retrofits, it is not hard to lay fiber wherever the streets get dug up.

Water: We own it! From the beginning.
Waste water treatment: We own it! From the beginning.
Public transportation: We own it! From the beginning.

Providing Internet access as a city service has got to be the cheapest service and at the highest quality a city can provide next to more difficult services like public transportation and water delivery. What is the resistance? Why should we continue the trend of giving these services away when they serve the public good?

Solutions:
Hybrid network: Trying to push all that data across the city over a created “cloud” may cause serious and additional interference with all kinds of existing networks plus interfere with other devices. We won’t know really until it is installed in such a small foot print of a city that is 7×7 miles square. Plus, it is unnecessary. Why not use this city-owned fiber network and build it out using neighborhood wireless access points? Somehow, this seems an obvious solution especially when it already exists. In addition, San Francisco has difficult terrain. There has not been any studies like other cities have done to see of this particular WiFi network will work here. Mountain View is very different in terrain than San Francisco.

Again, why should we settle for arguments of speed at 1 megabits per second when we could be getting well over a minimum of 4 mb/s tied into a fiber network with wireless access points at the last mile?

Plus, creating the infrastructure would be fairly painless compared to the other city services, at least here in SF, we have a dearth of great expertise in the field. Many cities are able to get their projects up and running with ease partnering with local technology experts. Take a look at Tim Pozar’s of BARWN & United Layer and Ralf Muehlen’s of SFLAN submissions to create excellent infrastructure, truly free access to the city’s residents and create ample revenue streams to boot to support ongoing maintenance and digital inclusion for everyone. Even Esme felt they were commendable and viable.
http://muniwireless.com/municipal/bids/862/
Submitted plans:
http://www.muniwireless.com/reports/docs/BARWN-SF-RFI.pdf
http://www.muniwireless.com/reports/docs/sflan_rfi_response.pdf

What is the resistance to using the fiber anyway? It’s inert. No radiation. It’s passive. Easy to manage. Secure. Very fast. Already available. No one knows as the City’s Department of Telecommunications and Information Services (DTIS) does not reveal any of its future planning not even to the elected Board of Supervisors. They have been left completely out of the loop which means the entire city’s residents are being led into a deep dark pit once again (now for 16 years) without any public input or oversight.

We also know that there are many reports that Google is buying up dark fiber wherever it can. Plus, where business can be created it will and now there are whole companies whose sole mission is to find and broker that dark fiber. Do a Google-search on that.

Plus, why is Google so interested? They are not an Internet service provider. They are a search engine and advertising machine and a very good one at that. Why expand into creating provider networks except for the same purpose as the one in Mountain View, CA, which was set up for market research where they installed a WiFi network to provide access so they could achieve that purpose? In fact, they had to partner with Earthlink in order to gain access into these markets.

With the Google-Earthlink plan here in San Francisco, we are dealing now with (yet another) utility coming into existence and wishing to install 15 year old technology when all this extremely fast fiber lays dark and dormant, owned by the residents of SF but very far from its reach to use it. When I attended Esme’s Muni-Wireless Conference in Santa Clara last year, I was approached by several Google employees, technologists, that truly understand the nature of what Google wants to do and how to do it.

The question to me was, what are your thoughts on using Wi-Fi to deliver broadband access to the residents of SF? At first, I thought I should be coy because my position was very different from most of the fee-based services that were attending there. I decided not to hold back as the part of being self-determining is to be outspoken as equally important.

As an amateur radio operator and WiFi enthusiast, I replied that this topology of using radio to push data over a free spectrum at such low power was truly backwards thinking. That it was more like trying to use a baby monitor down the block from your house because without a HAM radio license that is all that is available at reasonable cost. If we were so forward-thinking to install so much fiber, why not use a fraction of it for the residents? I remember in the mid-80′s when packet switching was just getting underway and the first wireless chat rooms emerged over the HAM radio networks. Just seeing a ping from the other side of the country was very exciting.

The Google employees agreed with me. They felt that this Google-Earthlink for SF plan was a fait accompli that it would be obsolete within a year and that it would not provide access except to those who had line-of-sight to any access point mounted on a street lamp pole (btw, for difficult access, DTIS says that you could buy for ~$200 external equipment and must subscribe to the $20/month pay service. That is not free, affordable and accessible WiFi). They went on to say that WiFi was never meant to be used outside of a closed room and using it as a city-wide solution when there is available fiber already to use was fairly stupid.

Well, I was floored at their agreement and confirmation. In fact, their support to keep up the opposition to this submitted plan. There is something to say about how and why city governments make their decisions when it comes to providing services. There is a trend and understanding that not the best or even good services are decided upon thus leaving many municipalities with “white elephants.” That was the word the Google employees used to describe this WiFi plan for SF.

I would urge that readers seriously read Tim Pozar and Ralf Muehlen’s entries during the RFI phase of this project. Their plans are solid. There are similar plans that other cities are doing. Also, inquire with the Mayor and Board of Supervisors as to why we are not using our city-owned fiber network to provide true high-speed access and digital inclusion.

The first wifi franchise will soak up most of the revenue in the city for their wireless service, raising the financial bar for any competitor. Additionally no one may place additional transmitters on the poles that Earthlink is using that cause their equipment to not work (limited electrical power, spectrum interference or additional weight/wind stresses).

Mr. Richardson is arguing for balance, but isn’t it really the San Francisco officials who should be explaining the tradeoffs?

BTW where is the Coverage in the agreement? Remember it was supposed to 95% outdoors, 90% indoors based on the RFI and RFP.

This website I believe is to gather best practicies – and learn from others: good and bad – It is quite acceptable to point out flaws in this agreement – I can assure you they will come up during the local political process here in San Francisco.

I think our city can do better than an effectively 16 year agreement with a best effort starting avg speed of only 300k that has privacy concerns.