Questioning TechConnect

Special guest correspondent Kimo Crossman sent his thoughts about recent developments regarding San Francisco Municipal WiFi.

Feeva.com which provided the Union Square hotspot and which Google is apparently behind, have now linked to this Business 2.0 article on their website about possible Google WiFi plans because it mentions Feeva. Can't imagine Feeva would do this if the article was way off.

The August 31st San Francisco WiFi Request for Information (RFI) initiative meeting was so embarassingly disorganized -- seems like they are just going through the motions for cover -- that they probably already know about a backroom deal. At the meeting they made a point to say that they had the option to go right into negotiation after the RFI rather than do a Request for Proposals (RFP) round. And so far their efforts to provide information to RFI parties including a promised transcript of Wednesday's pre-RFI meeting have been nonexistent.

No map of fiber facilities, no list of city light pole inventory -- a better example would be the city of Miami Beach. here's a writeup of the meeting. No transcript of the meeting or list of attendees has been posted as was promised.

This is sad because real input could improve the proposal they set out - for example they should promote better disaster recovery by getting at least two networks and have access points that can run on alternate electricity sources for the inevitable earthquake. Seeing the New Orleans disaster with the lack of communication - one would think SF would take this more seriously.

Kimo Crossman, contributing.