Remember Earthlink’s grand plan to bring Wi-Fi to the city of San Francisco? EarthLink never got around to it after leaving the municipal wireless business but the city quietly continued its efforts to bring Wi-Fi access to certain areas, mostly disadvantaged, together with local partners.
Now it appears that the city is setting up a Wi-Fi hotzone along Market Street, the main thoroughfare, from the Ferry Building all the way to the Castro. If there’s one city that could use a very good Wi-Fi network, it’s San Francisco. My experience with AT&T’s network in San Francisco, where I lived for three years, has been negative. My calls were dropped every time, the speed of the network was pathetic and coverage was patchy. All this trouble for about $50 per month. After leaving San Francisco in May 2011, I gave up my AT&T subscription with glee.
Now, I hope the city does not botch up this network. It needs to take into account the habits of people who have iPhones. That means it cannot have a cumbersome interface that requires you to enter a lot of information and keep clicking on “agree” buttons. The SF Muni/BART Wi-Fi network (which is free of charge) has the worst interface because it requires you to enter your user name and password every time. This does not work when you are waiting on the platform and don’t have time. The logon has to be automatic so you can quickly check email or send messages.
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