Wireless net to be draped over San Francisco

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is one ambitious dude. Few others would set out to do something on the scope that he is. Last August he put out a call for proposals on how to create cheap wireless services that would be available throughout the city. His requirements were 95% coverage outdoors, 90% coverage indoors, at least 1 megabit-per-second data transfer speed and the ability for people to stay connected even when in motion. In other words, he wanted to turn his city into one big hotspot – like a Starbucks on steroids.

The list of companies that responded to the proposal was a who’s who of high tech firms – Google, Nortel, Cisco and Earthlink among them. Most of the companies are proposing a mesh network. A mesh network is like a big fishing net draped over the city, with each knot on the net being a radio transmitter. The transmitters send radio signals back and forth between each other, computers and devices within the mesh equipped with a wireless card or integrated receive have access to the internet. One advantage of a mesh network is that if one transmitter is damaged or quits working, the other transmitters can fill in and maintain coverage in the affected area. The technology is also much cheaper to install than underground cables.

There is concern by some critics that the hilly terrain in San Francisco will challenge the mesh network. If you’ve ever had your car radio scrambled when you go into a valley, you know that radio waves and obstacles aren’t always friends. Though a majority of the proposals have yet to be made public, it is expected that companies would include additional equipment of some sort to overcome this problem.

Under one plan, residents could enjoy unlimited free surfing provided they didn’t mind an ad permanently on display in the corner of their browser. Ad haters could free themselves of this burden for $15 per month.

It is likely that many cities are closely watching the progress of this experiment in San Francisco.