It looks like Google had a contingency plan for municipal wi-fi in San Francisco in the event that Earthlink cratered. Last night I got an email from my ISP, Sonic.net, that said they’re going to try build an open wireless grid in partnership with Google using existing customers’ internet connections.
I sent this over to Om Malik who wrote it up on his blog last night.
It’ll be interesting to see if this plan to build the muni wi-fi network in San Francisco on an ad-hoc basis gets anywhere. There’s not much in it for the typical ISP customer, who would supply the electricity and a small chunk of bandwidth in exchange for a vague promise to share an unspecified bit of any Google advertising revenue that may be generated at some point in the future.
The real trick here for me would be figuring out who’s ultimately responsible for the network. I ran an open wireless network for my neighbors to use for a year, but I had to button it up after one of my bonehead neighbors started using it to download copyrighted movies, triggering several nastygrams which I did not appreciate.
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I got the same invitation, looked it over, and wondered why I would want to pay $40 for another wireless router when I already have a perfectly nice wireless router in my house. I suppose mine doesn’t mesh, or something. It will be interesting to see how this develops, but it would be best if Google spelled out the revenue sharing deal up front.
I don’t need to make money by participating in municipal wifi, but I don’t need to be directly subsidizing Google, either.
-danny
It’s not in partnership with Google, it’s in partnership with the startup Meraki Networks. That startup is “Google backed”; apparently Google made “a relatively small six-figure investment” in them. One of Meraki’s advisors is Hari Balakrishnan; he taught the best class I ever took at MIT, on networking.
I’m a sonic.net customer too (great ISP). I don’t quite get the offer; I pay $40 to lose 500kbps? Because I’m a nice guy?
There’s a NZ company offering a similar thing except it doesn’t cost anything to sign up.
“For every dollar spent on your Tomizone, we give you 50% back – what a deal!”
http://www.tomizone.com/the_deal.shtml