Google will pay for free wireless in S.F. parks
Ali LeBel (foreground) adjusts her smart phone in Alamo Square Tuesday July 23, 2013, one of the locations where new wireless will be added. Google will pay to install wireless access in 31 San Francisco parks, a donation brokered …
Context & Ripple Effects
San Francisco has been here before: Google laid out its municipal Wi-Fi pitch back in 2005, the city controller signed off on a free-internet plan in 2007, and community Wi-Fi briefly went live that August — only for EarthLink to walk away from the deal weeks later, stranding the effort. The 2000s model was a commercial franchise, and it collapsed on the economics.
First-order effects
- Park visitors at 31 San Francisco locations get free wireless access at no cost to the city, which acquires public infrastructure through a private gift rather than a contract.
Second-order effects
- Other Bay Area and national municipalities gain a template to solicit similar corporate donations, since the failed 2007 carrier-franchise path now has a working alternative.
Third-order effects
- Municipal wireless funding shifts structurally from carriers seeking ad-supported business cases toward platform companies subsidizing access where their users already are — making connectivity a marketing line item rather than a utility business.
The trend: City-scale free Wi-Fi is migrating from commercially franchised networks like the one EarthLink abandoned in 2007 to philanthropic deployments bankrolled by consumer internet platforms with local headquarters.