Meraki, the startup that makes a tiny $100 WiFi repeater, wants to build a free wireless network to eventually cover all of San Francisco - provided residents agree to install antennas on their property, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

Last summer San Francisco’s citywide wireless Internet access plan was left twisting in the wind when EarthLink pulled out. Now the Mountain View company, flush with cash from Google and a recent IPO, wants to turn the city into a test site for its vision of a low-cost, community-powered system.

Meraki’s Free the Net, has been testing its mesh system in San Francisco’s Mission, Lower Haight and Alamo Square neighborhoods since the spring. About 500 repeaters already are in use, providing service to 40,000 users.

Meraki repeaters, with 18dB power output, sell for as low as $49. Their signals connect to larger outdoor antennas that sell for $99. Together, they can deliver Internet access using a minimal number of Internet connections.

Meraki also will pay for the Internet access so users won’t be asked to share their personal Internet connection.

That differentiates Meraki’s network from FON, a Spanish company that has given away a number of free routers in San Francisco and elswhere, or SF LAN which would like to provide free WiFi infrastructure. Meraki’s new business plan generates revenue through advertising utilizing splash pages.

According to Phil Belanger, whose company, Novarum tests municipal networks;

“I think [the project] will work for Meraki. It will be good PR. It will be a good proof of concept. It will be a great lab in their backyard. However, this is not a repeatable ‘model.’ Remember, Meraki is giving away most of the equipment and paying for most of the Internet backhaul. They are not going to do that in ten or 20 or 100 cities. So, the real repeatable model has yet to be created.

Ozone in Paris offers a similar wireless Internet service based on a network of wireless repeaters. Its service is only free for those who host repeaters, others must pay US$26 a month.

Meraki claims it would be the country’s largest mesh network and would donate enough equipment and Internet access to provide free wireless service to all San Francisco residents. The network would use as many as 15,000 wireless antennas to relay signals from home to home in a type of digital daisy-chain. Meraki officials said they expect every neighborhood to get some access by the end of this year.

Meraki plans to blanket the city for less than $5 million, compared to the estimated $14 million to $17 million EarthLink had estimated it would cost to build a city network. One DSL line could support anywhere from 10 to 50 repeaters. With the mesh structure, Meraki also can reroute traffic to avoid any malfunctioning antennas.

Meraki’s plan hinges on the willingness of volunteers to erect thousands of devices on their rooftops, balconies or in windows. Since the venture will use private property, it does not require city approval. Instead, Meraki is betting on San Franciscans’ innovative spirit.

“There is no network like this,” said Sanjit Biswas, chief executive and co-founder of Meraki.

Nathan Ballard, spokesman for Mayor Gavin Newsom, said the city has been working with companies like Meraki, FON and SFLan to help build out wireless projects to reach the most needy. The city already is using some of the technology in housing authority properties and is looking at expanding those efforts to other low-income areas, he said.

The Meraki approach may be an attractive political solution for cities who have found their municipal wireless plans have imploded, due to higher cost, fewer subscribers and the pullout of Earthlink from the business.

Portland, Oregon, for example, features a free, advertising supported network built by MetroFi. DailyWireless is using it right now to post this story. But MetroFi said they would not continue to build out their network unless the city provides “anchor tenant” revenue guarantees. MetroFi’s Portland network is about 30% finished.

Portland’s Michael Burmeister-Brown (left), of the nonprofit NetEquality, explained how they use the $50 Meraki box to bring wireless Web access to low-income housing in Portland.

Burmeister-Brown, who is a co-founder of Central Point Software and a key developer of Yahoo Messenger software, has worked closely with MIT’s RoofNet group and their commercial spin-off, Meraki.

Net Equality installs wifi repeaters inside of the apartments or in the halls. Signals need only to penetrate interior apartment walls, not external concrete walls or weatherproof glass, improving propagation.

NetEquality likes to bring in broadband to a low-income apartment complex via wired DSL. Then they use a $50 Meraki box to repeat the signal. One $40/month DSL line can be shared by a dozen or more aparments by relaying the broadband signal through 3-4 Meraki access points that mesh together using the RoofNet protocol.

NetEquality played a key role in developing Meraki’s backend management software, called Dashboard (above), which maps access points on Google Maps.

Net Equality’s management backend, developed in parallel with Meraki, is open-sourced and designed to be simple and maintaince-free. The goal, explained Michael Burmeister-Brown, was to provide a simple, reliable solution for low-cost internet access. NetEquality targets low-income communities. It’s designed to be a stable, inexpensive, easy-to-use solution for property managers and end users.

With hundreds of apartments in the Portland metro area now being served by NetEquality’s Meraki solution, they appear to be successfully accomplishing their goal.

The Vancouver BC Wireless Group hopes to establish a free WiFi network by installing Meraki WiFi units around town. Join the FreeTheNet Google Group to stay in touch.

Want to do it yourself? The Wifidog project from Île Sans Fil, is an open source captive portal solution. It was designed primarily for wireless community groups, but caters to various other business models as well. Users can send pictures to the portal pages of specific hotspots. Wifidog will grab them via Flickr’s API and present them on the portal page. RSS feeds from either the owner or other local sources can also be applied. Wifidog is similar to OpenWRT and DD-WRT and can be flashed on Linksys or Buffalo routers for next to nothing.

Of course, it’s not exactly a new idea. Moblin.org hosts the Mobile & Internet Linux Project which is an umbrella, open source project focused on the development of Linux for Intel-based devices. Nokia uses the same Hildon application architecture and Maemo.org open source development tools for their N770/N800 as Intel is using for their Linux-based mobile Internet devices.

Why not One Laptop (or Eee PC) for every bus stop?

What should Portland do with their MetroFi service? It was built at no charge to the city, providing “free” WiFi (with advertising) with no requirement for the city to buy a minimum amount of service. Now MetroFi wants Portland to commit to buying bandwidth before it completes “unwiring” the remaining 66% of the city.

It’s a good time to negotiate.

Related Municipal Wireless stories on DailyWireless include; Digital Divide Initiatives, Meraki Jacks Up the Price, Personal Telco Finds Portland WiFi Coverage Lacking, Earthlink Restructures, MuniFi Holds Breath, SF Officially Backs Out of MuniFi, MuniFi: What Now?, Houston Gets it’s Money Back from Earthlink, Microsoft Mobilizes Ads, Portland MetroFi Gets Okay, Personal Telco Finds Portland WiFi Coverage Lacking, Portland MetroFi Update, Portland’s MetroFi: So Near Yet So Far, Corpus Christi & Portland: Cutting The Cord, Portland Chooses MetroFi for 134 Mile Cloud, Meraki Rocks, and Bridging the Digital Divide

Posted by Sam Churchill on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 8:30 am.