Google lands contract to build wireless San Francisco

By Steve Malone

Posted on 7 Apr 2006 at 10:24

Search engine Google along with partner ISP EarthLink has landed the contract to provide a wireless network to cover the whole of the City of San Francisco.

The 'Goolink WiFi' network will provide a 300Kbps free service, which will be subsidised by advertising. Alternatively, the network will offer a 1Mbps ad-free subscription service costing $20 a month. Last week Google made a patent application for targeting advertising based, in part, on the location of a wireless access point.

In a statement on the San Francisco government website Chris Vein, the Executive Director of the City's Department of Telecommunications and Information Services (DTIS) said: 'Our goal sets the city apart: the most important purpose for the network is to provide all San Franciscans, especially low-income families and residents of disadvantaged communities, with equal access to the social, educational, and economic opportunities available online'.

In total, six bids for the contract were received. Last October, Google made a last minute offer that San Francisco could not refuse by promising to operate a continuous wireless network across the city for free. Analysts reckoned that the bill to blanket coverage across the 49 square miles of the city would be somewhere between $10 to $18 million.

The 174-page proposal by Google and EarthLink promises to provide 95 percent outdoor coverage and 90 percent indoor coverage. However, there are some doubts as to whether either EarthLink or Google has the expertise to deliver on the contract as neither has ever been involved in building a wireless network before - let alone create one the size of a major city.

Following the successful bid, the City of San Francisco will now open detailed contract negotiations with the partnership, which will presumably include some kind of performance and delivery clauses.