San Francisco’s plan to blanket the city with wireless Internet access at little or no cost to users might bring a smile to the face of residents who would like to save money. But an array of entrenched telecommunications interests, including Internet service providers and telephone and cable television companies, are far from beaming.
City Google Wi-Fi Chills Telecoms
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Can you hear that noise? That’s the world’s smallest violin playing for Comcast and SBC, for not being able to milk as much money out of SF residents as they have up until now.
agree
my own area (in the UK) has a monoply on Telephone & Internet access. I have Broadband and the usual Telephone service, but they have just changed the charging system for the telephone whereby people who use there phones not very often have suddenly seen there line rental cost jump massively, problem is I can’t have Broadband without a telephone line rented from them otherwise we would disconnect the land line and just use mobiles but I am unable to switch to anyother provider due to a BT line not been available 🙁
Especially where a group of people feeding at the public trough is involved. When a government entity proposes ‘free’ services, you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s being paid for by someone. Instead of achieving basic levels of livability traditional/expected city services (sewer, water, streets, public safety, buildig code compliance, transportaion infrastructure, livability) my tax dollars, incluing local, state, and federal, will be spent by city officials to establish WiFi under their control.
The real questions are: are they doing this to obfuscate the issues with the city government’s ability of lack of to provide city services? achieve local monopoly to further their own political agenda? or — are they trying to do this to generate highly paid city management positions for the mayor’s buds? Position’s that will be political appointees answerable to political apponters?
Disclaimer: i don’t live in San Francisco, or the people’s undemocratic republic of california, and won’t benefit from the outcome of this plan, even though I will be paying for it as a taxpayer.
Internet access is as basic as electricity, roads and sewage. Why shouldn’t local authorities provide it if it benefits the city?
Are they acually using federal money? If not, then you aren’t paying for it. You said yourself that you don’t live in San Francisco or CA. I don’t see anywhere in the article where SF has any federal funding for this plan. They may have gotten state funds, but I doubt this as well. So…don’t complain about THAT. The only way I see anything you may pay involved is when many states arrive, hat in hand, to the US gov’t for money to cover debts, new projects, etc. That money ain’t guaranteed, as you said, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” But then you’re paying for EVERY frivolous state or local project, and it’s indirect.
The only places where local government should bother to provide net access are places the telcos and cable giants have ignored. And even then, only if the people want it — meaning there are enough people with computers or game consoles who would use it. In other words, where the government can fulfill a need or strong desire that the people cannot reasonably fulfill themselves.
So, I agree with you on this: San Francisco doesn’t need to waste their money on something like this, though I won’t go full-on conspiracy about it. they are a major, famous, metropolitan area basking in its own fabulousness. You can probably spit and get reasonably priced broadband, and prices will go down further. They don’t need it, and nothing I see shows that people particularly want it. Market forces are, in this case, working rather well. If they must go along with it they should limit it to, a wireless cloud around every library or something. Not the whole city.
–JM
No. The real questions are, what makes you think that your $40/mo. telco bill represents anything like the cost of service? Why does practically every ISP own wire that runs to your house? How do you know that your payments aren’t subsizing someone else’s access right now?
No one’s preventing SBC from putting WiMax in SF. Unless, of course, you count SBC.
I don’t think it’s clear — historically or now — that public monopolies are more efficient or innovative than municipalities. The only certainty is they’re less answerable (no elections) and the profits leave town. Show me a mayor in Bernie Ebbers cell, and I’ll change my mind.
“Disclaimer: i don’t live in San Francisco, or the people’s undemocratic republic of california, and won’t benefit from the outcome of this plan, even though I will be paying for it as a taxpayer.”
If you pay taxes in California but don’t live there it’s easy to see why you would have such a negative attitude about their citizens getting a free lunch. The smart thing to do would be to stop giving your money to a tax base that you don’t have to contribute to. It’s not like they are using Frderal money for this.
Or are you saying that you work in California and live somewhere else and are therefore obligated to pay state tax there?
Or are you just complaining about a situation that doesn’t actually exist, i.e. Federal tax money being used by SF to provide WiFi service to it’s residents?
Internet access is as basic as electricity, roads and sewage.
I’d imagine the residents of New Orleans disagreeing.
Before listening to the telcos complaints, ask: are we comparing apples to apples? Look at the terms of service for e.g. Verizon’s wireless offering. No servers, for one thing, no static IP. It even says they won’t sell it to you if you’re replacing an existing internet connection!
I would use Verizon’s wireless product if it offered true internet access. Until I can connect my mail server and web server, though, they’re not really competing. Proof enough that more competition is needed.
Here’s how I see it… I can utilize (if it happens) a possibly free, possibly slower city-wide WiFi network – which would be cool and convenient… But I can also maintain a regular ol’ ISP account that gives me a sure thing with speeds I’m already familiar with and if something goes wrong. I can call tech support and get assistance.
With Google’s WiFi plan, if it goes down, I get the feeling there’d be little one could do… Especially if it’s free.
So, if anyone else thinks like me, they’ll keep their existing internet service, make use of free Wi-Fi outside their house, and then hope that the threat of something like free Wi-Fi or other municipal internet/telecom services will boost performance/lower costs of existing internet/telecom services.
My land line alone comes out to close to $30 a month for basic services (NO long distance) and voice mail. That’s about $11 in taxes and other fees. Luckily, my neighbor and I share internet service otherwise my phone bill would be closer to $60 or $70 a month due to the outrageous costs of SBC DSL (even if you talk them down to $20 a month – it should be cheaper because it’s old tech, and until the infrastructure changes, it will be considered slower than cable… And on that note, dial-up shouldn’t cost more than $5 a month).
But, hey, this coming from a guy who thinks NO ONE should be able to earn more than $100,000 a year…
I agree, especially coming from a state that has problems just providing enough electricity to its residents and is 35 Billion dollars in the hole.
@Anonymous (IP: 212.50.186.—)
You guys in Europe do have it bad they are still charging by the minute for dialup in some places. Its coming along though my uncle in Switzerland has had DSL for a few years now i am not sure how much he pays for it but i am sure its not cheap.
I am not a huge fan of governemnt competeing with private industry in this way. As we all know what the government touches usually turn out to be crap or sub par at the least. It would be nice though if it brought the price of Cable Service down curently $60 a month for me.