Google Confirms Free San Francisco Wi-Fi Plan

1 Oct, 2005 at 1:38pm ET Article published in Tech

Om Malik’s Broadband Blog reports that Google company officials have confirmed a bid to build a free San Francisco-wide wifi network.

Google officials say San Francisco residents (and visitors) will enjoy a free 300 kilobits per second, always on connection anywhere in the city. As part of its proposal, the company says it will be offering wholesale access to other service providers, who will offer higher throughput connections to their customers.

“San Francisco will be a true test bed for location based services and applications,” says Chris Sacca, principal of new business development at Google. While the initial use of location-based services might be limited to more-focussed and targeted advertising, the potential of location-based services is immense, officials said. Sacca pointed out that the network bid was in line with Google’s thinking on delivering answers anytime anywhere to anyone, and looking beyond a desktop PC.

Source: Om Malik’s Broadband Blog

Comments

1 Oct 2005 ~ 10:24pm Madball I hope that's just a hint of what's to come. I think more and more cities will offer free internet access. I wish my town did.
1 Oct 2005 ~ 10:36pm sfleuriet That would be pretty cool to have
2 Oct 2005 ~ 10:16am MiracleManS And Google's next bid will be to change the name of the country to "The United States of Google"
2 Oct 2005 ~ 4:03pm profdlp It's a great idea in principle, but it would have been nicer to see something like this offered in a somewhat less-affluent area of the country.

I'm sure the fact that SF is a high-income location played a factor in their choice (more money = more computers = more potential users), but making this available in a place where more folks would have a harder time paying for it on their own would have been a nice move.
2 Oct 2005 ~ 6:08pm Linc

profdlp wrote:

It's a great idea in principle, but it would have been nicer to see something like this offered in a somewhat less-affluent area of the country.

I'm sure the fact that SF is a high-income location played a factor in their choice (more money = more computers = more potential users), but making this available in a place where more folks would have a harder time paying for it on their own would have been a nice move.

True, but I think it'll be moot pretty quick when it goes big. San Fran is fairly local to them, so it was probably the most convenient scale test.
2 Oct 2005 ~ 8:55pm celcho well, google is a company, not a charity. i'm sure they do plenty of charitable things, at least to the extent that tax deductions favor it, but they're going to do what makes money first.
2 Oct 2005 ~ 8:57pm profdlp

celcho wrote:

well, google is a company, not a charity. i'm sure they do plenty of charitable things, at least to the extent that tax deductions favor it, but they're going to do what makes money first.

I agree completely.

The question I've had in the back of my mind is how they expect to make money offering free Wi-Fi.
2 Oct 2005 ~ 9:48pm entropy Don't get me wrong, I love Google. But it's getting to be insane lately, with everything they're buying/doing. It's kind of scary, actually, them using their nice, kind front to get even bigger.
3 Oct 2005 ~ 1:05pm FormFactor It looks like they plan on making money by selling the wifi to area service providers who can offer higher speeds to their paying customers.
3 Oct 2005 ~ 11:11pm Madball

FormFactor wrote:

It looks like they plan on making money by selling the wifi to area service providers who can offer higher speeds to their paying customers.

Yeah, Google will offer a 'basic' service of 300kbs and will allow other ISP's to use their network and offer much higher speeds.
4 Oct 2005 ~ 10:04am profdlp Ah. That makes sense.

Thanks, guys.