January 6, 2008
San Fran Gets a Second Chance for Muni WiFi
In a turnaround of sorts, San Fransisco will get a second chance at municipal WiFi. But the second chance is not coming from some first or second tier wireless provider — Meraki.
City-wide Wi-Fi might not be a pipe dream for San Francisco residents after all. After successfully rolling out mesh networks in 6 San Francisco neighborhoods, Meraki Inc. has announced its plans to blanket the entire city with coverage by the end of 2008.
Google and Earthlink hatched a similar plan for a municipal Wi-Fi project last year that ultimately fizzled. However, Meraki believes that by bypassing coverage for the public safety sector, relying on volunteers, and installing dozens of wireless gateways on rooftops it can rapidly roll out coverage.
“This groundbreaking network in San Francisco will show the world that with Meraki’s unique approach to building networks, we can quickly bring broadband Internet access to every city in the world,” said Meraki CEO, Sanjit Biswas.
Meraki is taking an approach that ThirdPipe has been suggesting for some time now, open, mesh based, end user driven capability. Their website is here — Link. We will keep you posted on this. San Fran is their largest implementation to date. If it flies, as in taking off, this could spread to other cities like Chicago where Earthlink failed.
Filed under 802.xx, Municipalities, Wifi by Dr. Dog
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San Francisco gets more Wifi without the city governmnet’s help - again! | @ 9:16 am
[…] January 21, 2008San Francisco gets more Wifi without the city governmnet’s help - again! Want community WiFi in your area? Perhaps the best way to make it happen is to do it yourself. We reported earlier that Meraki was helping incrementally grow muni WiFi in San Fran. Now, residents of San Franciso’s Castro district are making happen using their own broadband connections and routers form FON. SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–FON, the world’s largest WiFi community, is calling on all residents of San Francisco’s famous Castro neighborhood to join the FON community and bring comprehensive WiFi access to the Castro. Any qualifying resident or business owner of the Castro is eligible to receive a free La Fonera wireless router, including installation. FON is turning the Castro into a free WiFi zone by having individual neighbors share a small portion of their Internet connection. Everyone who shares gets free access to all hotspots created by the community. Castro residents can request their free router at SharetheCastro.com. […]