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By KEVIN J. DELANEY
Wall Street Journal
Originally Published August 6, 2007
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is taking his push for free citywide wireless Internet access to the voters with a measure that will appear on November’s election ballot.
The mayor and Aaron Peskin, president of the city’s Board of Supervisors, Friday jointly put forward the measure that would make it the city’s policy to pursue such high-speed wireless Internet access through a public-private partnership, with protections for user privacy. Voter approval of the measure wouldn’t impose any binding requirements, but rather signal public support for a high-profile mayoral initiative that has encountered major delays and opposition.
Mr. Newsom’s office has negotiated an agreement with technology companies EarthLink Inc. and Google Inc. to build and operate such a network, but other city leaders are seeking changes to their agreement, such as cutting the contract’s length in half, to eight years from 16 years. The plans call for a citywide network providing free, high-speed Internet access using Wi-Fi wireless technology, with premium services such as higher-speed access available for a fee.
Raising doubts about the project, EarthLink recently said it was putting any new network building, which apparently includes San Francisco, on the back burner as it re-evaluates the profit potential of such networks. EarthLink, an Internet service provider based in Atlanta, last week was granted another month to respond to the latest San Francisco proposal.
"We’re confident that we will be able to come to an agreement with them on city Wi-Fi," said a spokesman for the mayor. The city isn’t required to await the outcome of the ballot measure to sign any contract with EarthLink and Google.
- : 1.0
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August 6th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
I hope that the supes and the voters come up with something better than the feeble plan that Gavin and his ‘people’ were trying to shove down our throats.
Can we do this without Earthlink? I don’t like the idea of Scientology having access to my personal information.