The San Francisco Chronicle takes a quick glance at the city’s delayed MuniFi deal with Earthlink and Google and says the negotiations are going back and forth over free vs for fee:
The elves in San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s workshop are racing to beat their end-of-the-year deadline to announce the city’s plan for “free” wireless Internet service. . . The key sticking point: what exactly will be free and what Google and EarthLink will be allowed to charge customers for upgraded service.
Earthlink said last week that they were hoping to finish negotiations as early as last Thursday, and that the next step after that would be to take those plans to the city’s Board of Supervisors either before the end of the year or in January.
Earthlink said this morning they have nothing to announce as of yet. It’s sounding more and more like nothing will be resolved before the New Year. And we’re not really sure about those next twelve months either.
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2 comments so far
11:10 AM PT
Are Google and Earthlink vying against each other, or working together ?
It wasnt clear to me.
Seems like a lot of cities here on the east coast are rolling out some nice solutions for the residents.
West Coast Lags Behind The East in Municipal Wi-Fi ?
11:55 AM PT
Jimmy, I had the same thoughts, which I wrote about here:
(link)
I think there is some tension between the two companies because they have such different intentions.- KF
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