The home of the Governator, the SF Giants and over 35 million people is also witnessing an aggressive push by its cities and counties to go Wi-Fi. There’s a pretty good reason for that. We’ve got some big urban areas, Silicon Valley’s early adopters in our midst and an interest in using wireless broadband to help education, business and basic communication.
OK, it’s Friday and the weather is nice in the Bay so excuse our sappy tribute. But here’s a list of some of the regions in Cali that are looking to get the Wi-Fi fix (remind us of cities we missed and we’ll add them in):
Silicon Valley: Silicon Valley Metro Connect, a group made up of IBM, Cisco Systems, SeaKay and Azulstar are moving on this one. There will be 42 cities over almost 1,500 square miles.
Anaheim, Pasadena, Milpitas: Earthlink’s networks. We were there for the Milpitas launch.
San Francisco: We all know that story.
Mountain View: Home of Google and its Wi-Fi network.
Marin County: They’re thinking about it.
Los Angeles: LA Times says the 500 square miles could cost between $54 million to $62 million.
Riverside: AT&T in Wi-Fi game with MetroFi.
Napa: AT&T too. Some raise questions with that process.
Oakland: My city has an RFP out.
Sacramento: WiSac project, intended for 9 counties and 30 munis.
Pacifica: South San Francisco city goes with Veraloft.
Concord, Cupertino, Foster City, San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Corona, Fremont: MetroFi
Long Beach: The city has Wi-Fi down south in certain areas and last I heard issued an RFP for citywide coverage.
Galt: Softcom and BelAir.
Fullerton (update): Tropos radios over a 24-block area — we asked the city for an update on any expansion plans and will add more if we hear.
We’ll update the list throughout the day. Check out this map of municipal broadband projects and more California cities with wireless plans and muniwireless.com’s list.
2 trackbacks so far
1:54 PM PT
[...] Original post by Katie Fehrenbacher [...]
11:39 PM PT
[...] Round-up of California muni/metro projects: GigaOm runs the tally of projects across the state that will bring vast areas of Wi-Fi. [...]
7 comments so far
11:40 AM PT
Fullerton CA has muni wi-fi as well. fullerton wireless page
12:50 PM PT
Right thanks.
1:43 PM PT
Cupertino is on the list.
BTW - The Yankee Group issued a report that covers some of the WiFi technologies and deployments at universities and the like. The way I read it, their take is that the technology is ready for campus environments (universities, corporate, etc.) but not quite for city-wide deployments.
2:18 PM PT
I will give you that a big state like California has engaged with municipal wifi, but at the moment it is a mile wide and an inch deep. I would push some friendly neighbor rivalry and suggest that you look north to Oregon for deeper engagements with both mesh wireless and WiMax.
But ultimately the real interesting question is not do you have a network up, but what are you doing with that network. What intentional objective is a city trying to accomplish by encouraging or even helping to implement a network? That seems to be a lost question in many deployments today.
4:58 PM PT
Los Gatos (south end of silicon valley) has had free no-ads municipal wifi since 2003. A quick google shows that it was a company called Firetide that set up the mesh.
8:41 AM PT
I keep a list (regularly updated) of US cities (and counties) that have: (1) city- or countywide networks up and running; (2) city hotzones; (3) networks used for municipal purposes only such as public safety; and (4) definitive plans for a network (networks not yet up but an RFP or RFI has been issued).
The last update was end of December 2006 and I will be updating it again this month:
(link)
9:26 PM PT
That’s actually only half of the list. Several cities such as Culver City and Santa Monica have pilots up, and RFPs out for more.
I have 94 CA cities on my list…and those are only the ones with a public announcement of some sort. 517 cities in the US in total. Yet that’s only 5% of the municipalites in the USA.
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