San Francisco and the Wisdom of Grassroots Wi-Fi

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has been determined for a while now to cover the city in Wi-Fi. After starts and stops with Google and Earthlink, today the mayor said he's getting behind a city-wide Wi-Fi effort by start-up Meraki -- which, incidentally, is partly funded by Google.

Meraki's approach sounds something like that of Madrid-based FON, except that FON seems to have hit on a formula that's catching fire in many parts of the world. FON sells little wireless routers specifically built to share a Wi-Fi signal. You buy one for about $22, use it as the wireless router in your home, and allow anyone who wanders into range to use your signal too. In exchange, you get to use the Wi-Fi from anyone else's FON router for free. It combines self-interest with public good. If enough people buy FON routers, FON participants could get free Wi-Fi almost anywhere.

This makes for a bottom-up, grassroots Wi-Fi network partially owned and maintained by the people who use it -- which seems a much more likely way to get these city systems built vs. contracting with a company to build a system from the top-down.

Then the question is: Why would SF go with an unproven start-up that's sort-of copying FON...instead of with FON itself?

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