Private start-up to bring free Wi-Fi to San Francisco
A California start-up hopes to use the stalemate over San Francisco’s municipal wireless network as a window of opportunity by launching its own free wireless network in the city.A California start-up hopes to use the stalemate over San Francisco’s municipal wireless network as a window of opportunity by launching its own free wireless network in the city.
Meraki Networks, based in Mountain View, announced on Monday that it will build a free wireless network to serve an estimated 15,000 San Francisco residents in the Mission, Castro, DubocePark, Lower Haight and Alamo Square districts.
Residents and business that sign up will receive free wireless routers that will serve as relay points in an area-wide mesh. Meraki expects the network will be operational within months. Network speeds are not expected to be as fast as DSL but should achieve downstream speeds of .5 to 1 Mbps
Earlier this year, Gary Bolles reported on Meraki’s efforts to break into new markets. San Francisco represents Meraki’s most ambitious move to date. Click here to read Gary’s story.
Click here to read C/Net’s coverage of the San Francisco announcement.
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I applaud this effort. It seems all to common for large cities to use the lure of free service (i.e. Philadelphia and SF) to generate support and then switch to what ends up basically beig a market rate one.
The value received by a community; economically, educationally and socially with free high-speed service (min 1mps)far outweighs the cost.
Unless a system is going to deliver this community benefit a municipality has no business even becoming involved. When is everyone going to wake up and realize that the benefits of free Internet are critical to the future health of many communities. Stop getting blinded by the incumbents.
Maybe if governments offered free 1-3mps service, universally it will drive the incumbents to finally deliver the 50-100 mps premium services the rest of the world enjoys.
There is a reason this country trails the world in so many areas……and this is an excellent example.
It should be noted that they have received significant funding from Google.
As an early adopter of Meraki in Olympia, WA, I’d have to say that Meraki is “tops”, and that they “rock”. What I really like is the support & developer community: I can’t wait to try the CUWIN mesh OS on the Meraki MIPS! Just add wholesale IP to Meraki and >poof!< instant "at-cost" neighborhood ISP-- I think Meraki makes sense as CPE, and I look forward to deploying the new outdoor Meraki Minis.
Of Note: > http://netequality.org/ <