August 30, 2007
Free Earthlink WiFi Deal Dies
You'll have to keep borrowing free wi-fi from cafes and the unsecured accounts of your neighbors for now -- Earthlink's backed out of the public-private free wifi deal with San Francisco because of its recent financial woes.
Gavin Newsom says he's committed to finding another private company to set up the whole system, and blames the Board of Supervisors for the deal falling through because they wanted more information before approving the agreement; the Board says Gavin should be glad we aren't saddled with a deal on terrible terms for the city.
Seems to us that even if the Board had approved the agreement, Earthlink's in enough financial trouble that they'd've backed out of it anyways, really. But what's the big deal, anyways? Can't Gavin just get someone rich to pay for it, like he wants to do with everything in the city these days? (We can't wait for the Swells crowd to start sponsoring individual MUNI lines! Ride the Dede Wilsey 38 Geary Limited! Wait for hours for the Charlotte Maillard Shultz T-Third!)
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Could someone *please* explain to me why this free Wi-Fi thing was such a huge deal? There are homeless shitting in parks, dropping needles everywhere; MUNI sucks ass; and the public schools resemble the movie set from "Escape from Alcatraz," yet THIS was what made the front page of the papers almost every single day?
Why? Why is it so f**king important to be able to get on the internet anywhere and everywhere? People who can't afford internet likely can't afford computers, either, and the yuppie jackasses who can't seem to separate themselves from their electronics can damn well wait to get home and check their precious internet. Like they need yet another outlet for their obnoxiousness.
Is there something I'm missing here, or is there a valid reason Newsom kept haling this as the 2nd coming of Christ?
i don't know f-cktard, could it be the same reason you can't spend 30 f-cking seconds to register on this god damn website?
i'm so tired of you f-ckers!
f-ck off!
Hey Rita, I know your blind love for our most socialist of supes clouds your vision - but you might want to revise your statement that all the supes wanted was "more information"
What the supes wanted was higher free broadband speeds and less advertising.
Yup, the supes killed this wifi deal because poor people wouldnt be able to download fast enough.
This is what passes as progressive in this backwards little town. The basic fundementals for all SF public policy are make sure the lowest common denominator is the most represented.
They might want to take a look at Meraki, which has already created a working free municipal WiFi network. As seems to be the case so often, the city is just trying to re-do what's already been done.
For what its worth a friend of mine works in the San Francisco office of EarthLink. On Tuesday everyone in their office, except per a few people, were told that they were being let go. According to my friend close to half of the company nationwide was let go. My friend and her colleagues were given until the end of the year plus severance for a period beyond that. I have not seen any releases from the company to verify all of this though.
"the supes killed this wifi deal because poor people wouldnt be able to download fast enough."
I think the bigger issue is privacy. The earlier proposal required a Google login (and of course allowing Google and its many partners to set cookies and track you with personally identifiable information). If you get the Earthlink access then they know everything about you down to your credit card number, address, phone number and credit history and would share/sell that information far and wide. The problem is that most people have no clue that the companies are doing this, and are against it when enlightened about it. So what happens when Joe Blow's driving directions to pot clubs, web searches for bomb making instructions, time spent online at kink.com etc. are leaked on the internet? Even if this information doesn't get leaked, why should we give Google all this information for every person in SF that ever logs into the free network, mostly without the users' knowledge? Legally, where does that put the City if something bad happens with all that collected data? I'm glad the proposal failed. Things like the free Meraki network could render the SF plan obsolete soon anyways.
sorry about my profanity. i just don't understand why so many of you can't spend 30 seconds registering an alias. nobody cares who you are but it would just make it so much easier to reply to your posts on here if you had a name other than guest.
i think the editors should stop accepting comments from guests. what decade is this?
;)
Only in San Francisco would people rather have nothing than accept a free, albeit imperfect Wi-Fi system.
I'm glad this deal fell apart. Its sounded like a complete clusterfuck boondoogle from Day One. Shitty service that doesn't go above the second floor of a building and you pretty much need to be near the street to get a signal, and then when you do, you get innundated with Google ads?
What kind of public WiFi system is that?!?!? Oh right - one where we get a public system for "free"? Now what was that my mother once told me about nothing ever really being "free"?
And as for Earthlink, it sounds like they going under anyways. Its already hit the wires that they laid off half their staff today. HALF. Including the president of their municipal WiFi. Even if Earthlink had gotten a signed contract before they imploded, its not bloody likely they would have been around to implement it. (Yes Gavin, you would have had a contract. But that doesn't mean much if your vendor is teetering on bankruptcy.)
Hopefully, the City and Board of Supes can just put all this behind them and move onto more important things like crime and homelessness.
*pause*
BWAHAHAHHAHAHHAAHA!!!! Sorry, lost my mind for a second there.
Whether or not the earthlink office in SF closed is irrelevant. If the deal had been ok'd, they would be contractually obligated to provide the service.
As far as privacy is concerned, there is no such thing as a free lunch... Dont like the cookies issue? Then pay for the service.
It's seriously "let's make sure they can eat cake" in this city...
It is odd to live in the City supposedly filled with Internet-based ingenuity and genius that also lags behind many other, smaller towns, cities, and Counties (see Oakland County in Michigan) that make their bread and butter from such things as manufacturing when it comes to the free availability of wireless Internet access.
If the City could disseminate and collect info. via the web, I wonder how much savings could be had from the reduced use of paper and more efficient processes could be with software automatically approving the "no-brainer" items (versus the employees and the morons who try to fight parking tickets at DPT soaking up your time for a residential parking permit, for example).
Wouldn't it be great to stop seeing Chronicle, Examiner, SF Weekly, Guardian, and the myriad of real estate printed materials disappear and no longer littering up our streets and killing off trees because folks get their info. primarily from the Internet wherever and whenever they please?
The City definitely shouldn't pursue this at the expense of other departments and other funding - there's a City/County employee retiree healthcare invoice that's coming due to the tune of $4.9 billion that will eat away most funds anyhow.
I don't know that Earthlink would have followed through, but the Supervisors certainly sent a message to businesses that may have tried ..... the message is that the City's Supervisors will do anything and everything to make sure a private-public partnership has a hellish time working with the City. That's sad.
Well Joe Blow sure won't have to worry about his credit card information or his kink.com surfing patterns now that he doesn't have any wireless at all....
Anyone who thinks that a signed contract somehow guarantees that Earthlink would have locked them into providing the service as kidding themselves.
First off, I wouldn't be surprised if they had some "good cause" clauses allowing contract termination. Who knows they might even have an economic hardship force majeure in there, knowing how bad the City is at contract negotiations under Gavin McNewsom.
Second off, a bankrupt company (which is where Earthlink could be headed with a 50% RIF)isn't going to wind up fulfilling the contract. Rather, the City would get pennies on the dollar (if its lucky.)
Third, even if not bankrupt, Earthlink could have just decided "hey, the muni WiFi thing is loser" and decided to breach the contract and paid damages to the City. Contract law is not the same thing as tort law. In a nutshell, common law treats contracts as principally economic exchanges and the harms caused by breach as principally economic ones. Outside of land and art sales, specific performance for a contract is rarely awarded as damages for breach. Instead, as damages for a breach of a mercantile relationship, the usual award is enought money to put the injured party is whatever position they would have been in absent the breach by the breaching party.
A couple of thoughts:
(1) Probably for the best that this deal died. Those who would have paid for faster service as a lower-cost alternative to SBC or whomever are probably better off.
(2) As for the free part - you learn in Econ 101 that there is no such thing as free. As someone else pointed out, with so many other problems in the city, do we really want to be spending millions on an ad-free municipally-provided system? I say no blank-ing way. And if you have google or someone else pay to build it, of course there will be ads. If someone has a provider who will come in and build a robust system-ad free, sign me up. (And Meraki isn't volunteering to do that BTW - if folks want to pony up $50 or $100 and buy a repeater for their little corner of the world, they're happy to sell it I think, but this is not the same thing as free service for all.)
Anyone here have any experience with Meraki? It looks like an intriguing project, but how well does it perform? Thanks for any info.
Sounds like the Board of Supes helped the city dodge a bullet. Sub-par service from an unreliable source makes no sense to me.
WiTri?
Looks like the Politics-As-Usual Suspects like Daly that comprise the “Regressive-laden” Board found a way to constipate progress again. Like clean, safe sidewalks another Quality-of-Life perk goes down the drain. Too bad, the Earthlink deal would have been helpful to launch a “Cyber-Roots” Internet campaign to Dump Daly!!!
Gavin Sucks.com Endorses Newsom!
Well, well....another one I could've guaranteed wouldn't happen just happened. What a surprise:
- Earthlink sucks
- "free wifi": by their own admission "free" would've been s-l-o-w-e-r than dial-up. Can someone explain how that is gonna help anyone??
- it's so easy when you're a do-nothing Mayor to blame someone else, isn't it FRAUD PRINCE?
He is a loser of the highest order, and again, if you want more of the same you go right out & vote for the sad, sad lil' 'man'
"But he's soooo cute" - - If I hear that one more time I'm going to vomit a little in my mouth!
GCN - Internet, yea! The people will love me!
Anyone with a brain - Ok, free wifi is good, lets see a plan that works.
GCN - Internet, yea! This plan is going to bridge the digital divide!
Anyone with a brain - Right, but the Google/Earthlink plan blows, stop ramming it down our throats and let's have a real discussion about how to deliver a usable signal to as many people as possible that won't force the City into an unending contract with a vendor that won't be able to deliver product that uses infrastructure paid for with our tax dollars.
GCN - Internet, yea! (crickets chirping)
Hmmm... I'm still not getting why donated money from the rich is such a huge problem... I mean, isn't that were the money always comes from; businesses and the wealthy who want to "give back". What about taxes, where do you reckon all that tax money comes from?
I don't quite get the logic of criticizing that... oh wait, that is probably because it isn't logical to criticize it.
I've actually tried to register. It logs me in, then doesn't post my comments. I don't know why, and I don't care why. I just don't want tech hassles.
hey kids, meraki is acutally creating a wifi network in SF and they don't need government money to do it.
earthlink, however is in finacial trouble. They are firing 900 workers, closing offices in SF and elsewhere, and are having real problems.
they also don't think muni wifi here or elsewhere makes any business sense to them and had told Mayor Gavin this months ago, instead wanting the city to pay them more money and not guarantee they'd even maintain the system.
so while it may make the brandy and coke bloggers at Gavin Sucks.com feel good to piss on Chris Daly, it doesn't square with any reality the rest of us, who aren't douchebag bloggers, have been reading about.
As it stands, the Board just saved us from going into business with a partner that wasn't up to the job, and woulda tried to back out, contract or not. But I guess all those brandy and cokes (ugh) made it hard to figure that out!
hey kids, meraki is acutally creating a wifi network in SF and they don't need government money to do it.
earthlink, however is in finacial trouble. They are firing 900 workers, closing offices in SF and elsewhere, and are having real problems.
they also don't think muni wifi here or elsewhere makes any business sense to them and had told Mayor Gavin this months ago, instead wanting the city to pay them more money and not guarantee they'd even maintain the system.
so while it may make the brandy and coke bloggers at Gavin Sucks.com feel good to piss on Chris Daly, it doesn't square with any reality the rest of us, who aren't douchebag bloggers, have been reading about.
As it stands, the Board just saved us from going into business with a partner that wasn't up to the job, and woulda tried to back out, contract or not. But I guess all those brandy and cokes (ugh) made it hard to figure that out!
If Newsom had been willing to work with the Board instead of his my-way-or-the-highway approach we would have had a *good* wi-fi system already up and running. Newsom blew this, time to get it right and just spend the $10 to pay a company to set up a system that actually reaches the poor people and won't freak out the ACLU.
Screw the BOS. What have they ever done to PROMOTE business in SF?
Nothing.
Meraki's great and all but who are you going to call when your node's anonymous "sponsor" doesn't like your politics and cuts you off or publishes your browsing history online, or the guy sharing the AP starts running a pr0n site and hogging all the bandwidth?
I mean there are some advantages to having huge faceless corporations run the internet. I think your privacy might be better off, you know, because there are *laws* and stuff.
Meraki... yawn. Let me known when it gets within 3 miles of the Outer Sunset. Until then, it's the same unfulfilled promise that SFLan gave us the last 4 years.