San Francisco Endorses Google and EarthLink’s Municipal Wireless Bid

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San Francisco Endorses Google and EarthLink’s Municipal Wireless Bid

7:00 am on April 7, 2006 | Category: Business, Wireless Technology, Internet, Wi-Fi

Google and EarthLink are now a big step closer to providing wireless internet access in San Francisco.

A city panel selected EarthLink and Google as their preferred partners out of six bids to build and manage the municipal Wi-Fi network.

The two companies will now enter final negotiations with city officials to perfect their business model, and come up with a harmonious agreement to provide Wi-Fi service in the region.

The fundamental cornerstone of the joint proposal is that it will offer two tiers of service, one that is free and supported by ads, and another that costs around $20/month, and offers significantly faster data transfer speeds. Google is expected to provide the ad inventory for the free service, while EarthLink will be primarily responsible for operating the paid tier.

Being endorsed by the city of San Francisco is a big achievement for both companies, especially EarthLink, which already won the contract to build a citywide Wi-Fi network in Philadelphia. If the popular ISP does a good job of running these two massive projects, it will likely become a leading force in the emerging market for municipal mesh wireless networks.