free internet?

December 5, 2005 2:01 AM

Any word on the SF free wireless offer?

The SF Gate ran a story a couple months ago announcing Google's offer of free wireless internet for the San Francisco area. Since then I've heard nothing of it. Does anyone know if and when this (excellent) idea might come to fruition?

This is the article (I don't know how to link!):
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/01/MNGG9F16KG1.DTL

posted by purplefiber to computers & internet (7 answers total)

Don't know anything about the offer, but knowing how to link is useful. What you want to type is <a href="theurlyouarelinking.com/whatever>the text you want linked</a>
posted by solotoro at 9:00 AM on December 5, 2005

Er, that's just a space between a and href, not a hard return or anything.
posted by solotoro at 9:01 AM on December 5, 2005

The official name of the program is TechConnect.

At the time, Google submitted an informational proposal to the city's RFI/C (Request for Information & Comment) - not a formal proposal. Google was only one of 26 proposals submitted.

Based on the latest press release, a formal RFP (Request for Proposals) was supposed to be issued at the end of November with proposal selection and vendor negotiations in early 2006. Depending on the speed of rollout, free wireless will probably not be available until late 2006 or early 2007, be it Google or another vendor.
posted by junesix at 10:00 AM on December 5, 2005

The City of San Francisco is going through the motions to provide access to utility poles for city-wide WiFi. The Google proposal is within this framework.

A Nov 8 press release says "The Department of Telecommunications and Information Services (DTIS) and the SF PUC will release the RFP on behalf of the City later this month and hopes to select a proposal and commence negotiations early next year."

The SFgov TechConnect page is probably the best place to get up-to-date information on the project as it happens.
posted by trevyn at 10:02 AM on December 5, 2005

Oh, sure, 8 hours go by, then BAM. /cry
posted by trevyn at 10:03 AM on December 5, 2005

thanks for the info!
posted by purplefiber at 11:27 AM on December 5, 2005

You might be interested in Niall Kennedy's blog post, where he spots the first live nodes in the network.

It's alive!
posted by cali at 9:45 PM on December 5, 2005