San Francisco (CA) - A plan that was thwarted last year when two major companies, Google and Earthlink, pulled out of the works, seems to be back on.  A Silicon Valley startup company called Meraki Networks, Inc., whose financial backers now include Google, have just received $20 million from venture capitalists.  This is enough to provide free WiFi to everyone in San Francisco's 47 square miles.


How will it work?  It's actually quite an ingenious plan.  In order to get around several regulations and costly stumbling blocks, the effort is looking to affix WiFi repeaters on personal property, not public property.  This means that individual homeowners will receive for free a device sponsored by the effort.  They will mount it on their home and pay only for electricity.  This will service an area around their home allowing for free WiFi Internet access.  When enough of these repeaters are installed, the system fully encompasses San Francisco, and provides unlimited Internet access to all.

A portion of the overall plan is currently complete.  A 2-square mile section of San Francisco, with service to 40,000 people, is already complete.  It utilizes 500 repeaters, and was part of the first phase of this program.  Meraki gave away the repeaters and installed them on rooftops of people's homes.

A remaining hurdle for the 10,000 to 15,000 remaining repeaters required to blanket the entire city may be in finding enough volunteers to install the devices on their homes in strategic locations.  There may be plenty of volunteers, just not at the right locations.  Meraki believes that as the project moves forward, these small remaining issues will be sorted out and that the program will prove to be a tremendous success.  No information was given on bandwidth limitations, how the repeaters work, or what technology is employed for security in wireless communications.

Read more ... Time.