Some Worries as San Francisco Goes Wireless

Some Worries as San Francisco Goes Wireless
By LAURIE J. FLYNN
SAN FRANCISCO, April 9 - When Mayor Gavin Newsom announced 18 months
ago that he intended to provide free wireless access to all of the
city's 760,000 residents, Chris Vein said he felt sorry for the "poor
guy" who would have to carry out the complex task. Today, nine months
after taking the job as head of the city's technology department, Mr.
Vein is the point person in negotiations over the details.

Last week, the city announced it had selected Google and EarthLink to
build the wireless network, which it hopes will be in operation early
next year. The two companies, along with Tropos Networks and Motorola,
which will help build the infrastructure for the network, beat out five
other bidding teams in a six-week review process.

The exact terms and business model are to be decided in negotiations
that are expected to begin next month between the city and EarthLink,
the lead company.

But in the few days since the winning bidder was announced, the city,
along with Mr. Vein, has found itself at the center of debate about the
role of advertising, the implications of the network on consumer
privacy and the effect on telecommunications companies that today sell
Internet access in the city.

The San Francisco service will be EarthLink's fourth municipal wireless
network. The plan is to blanket the city's 49 square miles so that all
residents can connect to the Internet from their homes and offices and
even from their neighborhood park.

Mr. Vein said that, from the start, the project's mission had been to
help bridge the so-called digital divide by providing wireless access
to residents who could not get it otherwise.

"This is really intended to help those people first, and everybody else
second," said Mr. Vein, San Francisco's executive director of
telecommunications and information services.

The other companies that submitted bids for the city contract were SF
Metro Connect, a collaboration between Cisco Systems; I.B.M. and SeaKay
Inc., a nonprofit group; Communications Bridge Global; MetroFi;
NextWLAN; and Razortooth Communications.

Mr. Vein, who was not on the review committee, said the group led by
EarthLink narrowly beat out MetroFi. Mr. Vein said that EarthLink's
experience building a similar high-profile wireless network under
construction in Philadelphia may have contributed to its winning the
San Francisco contract.

Users of the network in San Francisco will be able to choose from two
options. From Google, at no cost, they will be able to connect to the
Internet at the modest speed of 300 kilobits a second, about six times
as fast as a dial-up connection but slower than cable service. The
trade-off is that they will see a variety of on-screen advertising,
though exactly what that will look like is part of the negotiations.

Or, for an estimated $20 a month, subscribers will be able to connect
through EarthLink at roughly four times that speed and see no
advertising at all.

Mr. Vein said he thought the typical San Francisco resident, and the
additional 400,000 who commute into the city every weekday, would take
advantage of the free service, but that the city's many small
businesses would likely pay for the faster service.

San Francisco already has more wireless hot spots than most other
American cities - about 800 of them, nearly 400 of them free,
according a recent report by JBoss, a research company - but the new
network would extend throughout the entire city.

For Google, the San Francisco network is indicative of the company's
move to expand well beyond search, into areas like local advertising
and real estate listings.

But even before the city announced the winning bidder, privacy
advocates had begun to criticize the Google approach for what they say
is its potential to violate consumer privacy. Early last week, the
Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information
Council released a joint report calling the EarthLink and Google
proposal "privacy-invasive," because it would involve "cookies" that
track users from session to session to enable customized delivery of
ads.

Mr. Vein said the criticism was premature given that the city and the
companies had not yet negotiated the details of the network.

"While we have picked somebody, we haven't necessarily agreed to the
details of the proposal," Mr. Vein said. "It is just a starting point."


Mr. Vein said the city would make decisions related to privacy as the
issues came up during negotiations. "I will be pushing to maintain the
privacy and security of citizens as best I can as I put this deal
together," he said.

Megan Quinn, a Google spokeswoman, said the company intended to work
closely with the city and EarthLink to allay any concerns. "Always our
users' privacy and security are of utmost importance to us," she said.
"This is a planning process."

At the formal announcement of the project last October, Mr. Newsom told
reporters he feared that telecommunication companies serving San
Francisco would try to block the building of the network. At the time,
SBC Communications (now AT&T), Comcast and other companies in
California argued that low-cost access to the Internet was already
widely available to the public in San Francisco.

In addition to Philadelphia, EarthLink is building wireless citywide
networks in Anaheim and Milpitas, Calif., all priced at $20 a month.
Dozens of other cities have various wireless networks under development
or in the planning stages, including Chicago, Boston and Austin, Tex.

MetroFi already offers citywide wireless access in several midsize
Silicon Valley cities including Cupertino, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara.

Esme Vos, who writes about municipal wireless projects at
muniwireless.com, estimates that cities, towns and counties in the
United States will spend nearly $700 million over the next three years
to build citywide wireless networks.

William Tolpegin, vice president for development and planning at
EarthLink in Atlanta, said the EarthLink-led consortium expected to
spend $8 million to $10 million to build the network in San Francisco.

/*
Mr. Vein said that EarthLink's
experience building a similar high-profile wireless network under
construction in Philadelphia may have contributed to its winning the
San Francisco contract.
*/

Since when were unfinished systems good references? Someone hasn't
been keeping up on their Risks Digests... (see comp.risks)

"(E-Mail Removed)" <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:

>William Tolpegin, vice president for development and planning at
>EarthLink in Atlanta, said the EarthLink-led consortium expected to
>spend $8 million to $10 million to build the network in San Francisco.

Hmmm.... 135 square miles of Philadelphia is going to cost Earthlink
$20 to 22 million (revised upwards from $10 to $15 million) to build.
That's $163,000 per sq mile. San Francisco's 50 square miles will
cost $8 to $10 million or $200,000 per sq mile. The cost estimates
seem to be climbing.

--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Jeff Liebermann wrote:

> "(E-Mail Removed)" <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:
>
>>William Tolpegin, vice president for development and planning at
>>EarthLink in Atlanta, said the EarthLink-led consortium expected to
>>spend $8 million to $10 million to build the network in San Francisco.
>
> Hmmm.... 135 square miles of Philadelphia is going to cost Earthlink
> $20 to 22 million (revised upwards from $10 to $15 million) to build.
> That's $163,000 per sq mile. San Francisco's 50 square miles will
> cost $8 to $10 million or $200,000 per sq mile. The cost estimates
> seem to be climbing.

I don't know Philly, but it's surely flatter than SF. I'd guess getting
complete coverage _should_ be more expensive. 25% doesn't sound that out of
line.
--
derek

You could argue that having hills would make it cheaper to impliment.

Mike Schumann

"Derek Broughton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:7nkqg3-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>
>> "(E-Mail Removed)" <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:
>>
>>>William Tolpegin, vice president for development and planning at
>>>EarthLink in Atlanta, said the EarthLink-led consortium expected to
>>>spend $8 million to $10 million to build the network in San Francisco.
>>
>> Hmmm.... 135 square miles of Philadelphia is going to cost Earthlink
>> $20 to 22 million (revised upwards from $10 to $15 million) to build.
>> That's $163,000 per sq mile. San Francisco's 50 square miles will
>> cost $8 to $10 million or $200,000 per sq mile. The cost estimates
>> seem to be climbing.
>
> I don't know Philly, but it's surely flatter than SF. I'd guess getting
> complete coverage _should_ be more expensive. 25% doesn't sound that out
> of
> line.
> --
> derek

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, Jeff Liebermann <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>"(E-Mail Removed)" <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:
>
>>William Tolpegin, vice president for development and planning at
>>EarthLink in Atlanta, said the EarthLink-led consortium expected to
>>spend $8 million to $10 million to build the network in San Francisco.
>
>Hmmm.... 135 square miles of Philadelphia is going to cost Earthlink
>$20 to 22 million (revised upwards from $10 to $15 million) to build.
>That's $163,000 per sq mile. San Francisco's 50 square miles will
>cost $8 to $10 million or $200,000 per sq mile. The cost estimates
>seem to be climbing.
>

I'm wondering if SF is a bit hillier then Philly? Would that perhaps make a
differnce?

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

In article <kvD_f.2841$(E-Mail Removed). net>, "Mike Schumann" <mike-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>You could argue that having hills would make it cheaper to impliment.

You could if the owners of the hill tops were of a mood to contribute.

>
>Mike Schumann
>
>"Derek Broughton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>news:7nkqg3-(E-Mail Removed)...
>> Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>>
>>> "(E-Mail Removed)" <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:
>>>
>>>>William Tolpegin, vice president for development and planning at
>>>>EarthLink in Atlanta, said the EarthLink-led consortium expected to
>>>>spend $8 million to $10 million to build the network in San Francisco.
>>>
>>> Hmmm.... 135 square miles of Philadelphia is going to cost Earthlink
>>> $20 to 22 million (revised upwards from $10 to $15 million) to build.
>>> That's $163,000 per sq mile. San Francisco's 50 square miles will
>>> cost $8 to $10 million or $200,000 per sq mile. The cost estimates
>>> seem to be climbing.
>>
>> I don't know Philly, but it's surely flatter than SF. I'd guess getting
>> complete coverage _should_ be more expensive. 25% doesn't sound that out
>> of
>> line.
>> --
>> derek
>
>

fundamentalism, fundamentally wrong.

Rico wrote:

> In article <kvD_f.2841$(E-Mail Removed). net>, "Mike
> Schumann" <mike-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>You could argue that having hills would make it cheaper to impliment.
>
> You could if the owners of the hill tops were of a mood to contribute.
>
I expect that's not too difficult. There must be a reason that they have
a "Telegraph Hill" - I expect there've been towers on the highest hills
since the dawn of wireless.

But I don't accept that hills could make it cheaper to implement. One
wireless transmitter of sufficient power can easily cover the area of a
typical _flat_ city. Hills provide shadow, so you really _must_ get
transmitters on every hill-top to reach into all of the valleys.
--
derek

Derek Broughton <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:

>Jeff Liebermann wrote:
>
>> "(E-Mail Removed)" <(E-Mail Removed)> hath wroth:
>>
>>>William Tolpegin, vice president for development and planning at
>>>EarthLink in Atlanta, said the EarthLink-led consortium expected to
>>>spend $8 million to $10 million to build the network in San Francisco.
>>
>> Hmmm.... 135 square miles of Philadelphia is going to cost Earthlink
>> $20 to 22 million (revised upwards from $10 to $15 million) to build.
>> That's $163,000 per sq mile. San Francisco's 50 square miles will
>> cost $8 to $10 million or $200,000 per sq mile. The cost estimates
>> seem to be climbing.

>I don't know Philly, but it's surely flatter than SF. I'd guess getting
>complete coverage _should_ be more expensive. 25% doesn't sound that out of
>line.

Earthlink will probably use the same distribution methods for both San
Francisco and Philadelphia. The wireless mesh repeaters are located
on municipal light poles (because or access problems and nobody wants
to pay greedy building owners for site rentals). The wired backhauls
will probably be located on buildings. Mounting radios on rooftops is
asking for line of sight problems in urban canyons, and problems with
massive interference from hearing too many mesh repeaters. With light
poles in urban canyons, the topolography can be flat or hilly, it
doesn't matter.

--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558