by Playfuls Staff |
6th April 2006
According to AP, Google and EarthLink had won the bid for building a wireless network in San Francisco. The San Francisco’s wireless network will offer basic Interent access for free and those who wish to surf at higher speeds will have to pay $20 per month. [more]
In the past, Google and EarthLink had beebiding against each other, but in February they decided to team up.
The estimated price of the entire network is at least $15 million. The bid was one of six San Francisco city officials said they received. Other proposals were submitted by MetroFi, Communication Bridge Global, NextWLAN, Razortooth Communications and SF Metro Connect, which is an alliance of SeaKay, Cisco Systems and IBM.
Google spokeswoman Megan Quinn, quoted by AP, said the company is thrilled with Wednesday's decision and is eager to launch the free Wi-Fi service.
An EarthLink executive also was pleased. "We look forward to getting started in building a solution that will bring the incredible possibilities to reality," said Donald Berryman, who oversees EarthLink's municipal Wi-Fi efforts.
Now the next step is the negociation of the final contract between San Francisco and the Google-EartLink partnership.
U.S. cities spent some $76.5 million on wireless networks in 2005, according to the research company MuniWireless. That number is expected to soar 430 percent to $405.6 million in 2007.
