EarthLink has delayed talks with San Francisco city leaders, and a recent statement by the company’s new leader has some at City Hall wondering if the San Francisco WiFi deal is dead, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. EarthLink is becoming increasingly skittish about building wireless networks for cities, notes the Washington Post. According to the Chronicle:
At the request of EarthLink, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (motions) agreed Wednesday to delay for a month the hearing on the proposed contract between the city and company. The vote came just days after the company’s new chief executive officer said the company is re-evaluating its Wi-Fi business.
City supervisors have been waiting nearly three weeks to hear from the company regarding changes supervisors wanted in the contract, which was negotiated between the mayor’s office and EarthLink.
“There’s good news and bad news. The good news is EarthLink has finally gotten back to me,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who proposed the changes. “The bad news is they have still not made any counterproposal.”
EarthLink officials said last month they would consider the changes and respond to officials within days; they have yet to do so, other than to ask for more time.
One option Earthlink now wants is insisting that cities become “anchor tenants” of Wi-Fi networks to guarantee some revenue for EarthLink. EarthLink’s other major concern in San Francisco is Peskin’s proposal to shorten the contract from 16 years to eight years. Doing so would be “impossible,” said Cole Reinwand, vice president for strategy and marketing for EarthLink Municipal Networks.
Under an agreement SF Mayor Gavin Newsom reached in January, Earthlink would pay the city $2m over four years in exchange for the right to build, own and operate a wireless network. Newsom said it will help bridge the digital divide without saddling taxpayers with exorbitant costs.
In April, San Francisco’s planning commission said the network was exempt from an environmental review, but the San Francisco Neighborhood Antenna Free Union (SNAFU) challenged the decision. The concerns include the health effects of antennas, whether proposed terms would jeopardize privacy and free speech, and the appropriateness of the city entering into an exclusive contract that some say amounts to a giveaway of public resources.
Aaron Peskin, President of the SF Board of Supervisors, recently pushed for a faster free version (from 300kbps to 500kbps) and tighten information Earthlink and Google can collect and store about users. He’s also proposed cutting the term of the contract in half, to 8 years.
Related DailyWireless stories include; Earthlink Tweeks WiFi Business, San Francisco: Now it’s the Antennas!, WiFi War in San Francisco, SF Cloud: Mute Point?, Meraki Networking in SF, El Paso Unwired + Most of California, NY State, Toledo & SF Wireless Plans, SF Cloud: Done Deal?, SF: Freedom Not Free, Rain on SF Cloud, San Francisco BusFi, Google WiFi SitRep, Wireless Silicon Valley Proposals, GoogleFi: Ads or Not?, Google WiFi Interview, 100th Anniversary of SF Earthquake, Portland Chooses MetroFi for 134 Mile Cloud, SF WiFi: Bad Deal for Poor? and SF Cloud: It’s Google/Earthlink.
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