The Associated Press reports that the City's secret-until-today five member WiFi panel has spoken, and that they have "identified the search leader and EarthLink Inc. as the best candidates" for the long-discussed plan to bring WiFi access to all of San Francisco.

Next up: EarthLink and (less prominently) Google will begin contract negotiations with San Francisco. It's too soon to tell what the end result will be (unless you're Kimo Crossman, who hasn't been that off base so far).

This negotiation process will have to manage all the usual stuff about who gets paid how much when and how much the "premium" (read: ad free) service will cost, plus put to rest the additional issues of privacy and security. With all that to deal with we can't imagine that we'll be online all over any time soon. Of course, the contract will require final approval of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, which means we might get to hear Chris Daly yell at Kimo Crossman again, reason enough to keep us glued to SFGTV for the forseeable future.