San Francisco WiFits.

[WiFi.com]

The wireless Internet system in San Francisco is caught up in a political quagmire.

The Mayor, Gary Newsom, signed a contract with Earthlink and Google to deploy a free and "pay for" wirelesss Internet network in the city, but it appears not everyone is on board with this plan.

One argument is the city should fund the network itself and use a fiber-based system with some areas of "wifi" connection. This would be costly to the city - which in the short and long term means the citizens of San Francisco will be paying for it.

The current plan is to have an outside business (Earthlink) foot the cost of implementing and maintaining the system. However, for faster speeds you would be required to pay a monthly fee. This doesnt sound too unreasonable if you consider they will be footing the bill for the whole thing.

It appears most of the pushback is based upon how reliable and fast the network will be. Considering most municipal networks already in operation are having some issues we can understand the concern. However, these networks are in their infancy and technologies such as WiMax (which would play a role in the larger networks) are behind WiFi when it comes to certification and implementation. Understandably the WiMax industry is attempting to avoid the fragmentation issues which are evident with WiFi.

Bottom line, San Francisco needs to do what is best for the citizens and considering every option is really the best way to approach building a wireless network of this size.