Thanks to a housing crisis and the ensuing economic meltdown, many U.S. cities decided to back off their original Municipal Wi-Fi plans. San Francisco, however, was seen as the epicenter of the municipal revolution. Unfortunately that never happened and all we have is a handful of free network rollouts, including the Free The Net SF run by San Francisco-based hardware maker, Meraki.

Now comes word that by 2013, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency will install 360 new bus stops powered by solar panels that will, in turn, power Wi-Fi routers and digital information panels, with any unused energy being pumped into the city’s grid. Popular Mechanics reports:

• San Francisco’s high-tech bus stops will channel an estimated 43,000 kilowatt-hours per year into the city’s grid. Built-in Wi-Fi routers will help the city create a comprehensive wireless Internet network.
• Each bus stop costs about $30,000. City officials say Clear Channel Outdoor has an installation and maintenance contract with the SFMTA. The company foots the bill and gets saleable ad space.
• The new shelters’ LED lights use 74.4 watts—four and a half times more efficient than the 336 watts used by the old shelters’ fluorescent lighting.

I checked with my colleagues over at Earth2Tech and they tell me the whole thing looks quite plausible and that the 43,000 kilowatt-hours being pushed back into the city grid isn’t too over the top. I wonder how much the fog and cloud cover will impact the actual performance of this system. (Hat tip, Kimo)

Photo courtesy of Popular Mechanics. Click on the image to be taken to the Popular Mechanics web site.

As many of you know, I recently moved to a new neighborhood in San Francisco. The move came with its own share of ups and downs, but waiting for broadband was the most challenging for me. It took almost five days to get the connection hooked up, and while I was waiting, my Internet access came from a Sprint MiFi, arguably the most useful tool for a web worker.

But I quickly ran through my 5GB data transfer limit — thanks to watching Hulu and listening to Spotify, two services that have replaced television and radio in my life. My next best option was Free the Net SF, an open Wi-Fi network maintained in my neighborhood by San Francisco-based startup Meraki. It wasn’t the fastest, but it provided enough bandwidth for me to watch “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” The mesh wireless networking hardware maker has been a favorite of ours for years now — and it was the first time I really benefited from its Net SF experiment.

Since then, whenever I walk over for a coffee or want to sit in the park and catch up on my reading on my  iPhone, I hop on that network. I don’t use AT&T’s (s T) 3G network — I use my iPhone as an iPod. And so do others. Meraki recently conducted a wireless access census and found some amazing statistics.

This blog and I were here during the Wi-Fi boom, when the wireless networking technology was seen as a solution for world hunger. (OK, that was a joke.) It quickly went from being an in-home (and on-campus) technology to the cornerstone of municipal wireless efforts. By 2006, the hype cycle ended, and reality set in about the potential and economics of Wi-Fi. Many municipal Wi-Fi efforts started to stall, and companies such as EarthLink backed away from it.

And then smartphones happened. The current smartphone boom, led by Apple’s iPhone, has given Wi-Fi a much-needed boost, as Meraki data shows. First, some stats from the census that compared the devices that accessed Meraki access points in 2008 and 2009:

• The number of Apple devices observed, including laptops, iPhones and iPods grew by an impressive 221 percent.
• Apple now represents 32 percent vs. 14 percent in 2008 of all the devices seen by Meraki networks in North America.
• The number of smartphones (handheld devices) has quadrupled over the past year, with RIM showing a gain of 419 percent.
• The number of people using Intel-based devices declined 11 percent, which tells me that more people are using smartphones vs. laptops.

Now to be clear, Meraki has a big presence in the San Francisco Bay Area, which skews the usage patterns a little. But, as we have written in the past, Wi-Fi use has been going up across the U.S., as the data collected by AdMob shows. AdMob is a mobile advertising company. We also checked with enterprise Wi-Fi network provider iPass on the network usage, and a company spokesperson told us it had seen a 200 percent increase in enterprise smartphone use over its global Wi-Fi network from the first quarter to the second quarter of 2009. The U.S., UK and the Netherlands were the countries with the highest Wi-Fi growth, regardless of device, during that same period, according to iPass data.

The usage has grown as major 3G networks have choked under heavy mobile Internet use. There is no stopping smartphone sales, according to data collected by Infonetics Research, a market research company. (See chart.) With the growing availability of Google Android-based handsets, 2009 will prove to be a banner year for smartphones. (See a related research report from GigaOM Pro, “Google’s Mobile Strategy” (subscription required). We will also be discussing this topic as part of a free Research Roundtable Webinar on Aug. 27, 2009. Register here.)

In my opinion, the presence of PC-quality browsers, such as Safari, on smartphones and webkit-based browsers, as well as the growing popularity of social-networking services such as Twitter and Facebook as communication tools, have boosted the demand for wireless data. These tools demand data connectivity, and people want to check them while on the go. This spurt in usage has left the carriers that long saw themselves as Wi-Fi’s enemy coming around and embracing the insurgent technology.

AT&T’s $275 million acquisition of Wayport and the recent agreement between Verizon and Santa Monica, Calif., Wi-Fi aggregator Boingo Wireless are signs that despite the availability of faster 3G networks, the low-cost economics of the Wi-Fi ecosystem are alive and kicking.

Wi-Fi, which is based on a sliver of open wireless spectrum, is finally proving its disruptive qualities. The concurrent boom in demand for Wi-Fi-based connectivity shows that most networking technologies have to find a way to coexist in our increasingly bandwidth-hungry lives. As for me, I am enjoying the seamless Wi-Fi — in my apartment, my work and my home.

No wonder I don’t miss my 3G connection.

Originally Published: July 2008

This is a continuation of the theme ‘free’, but from a different perspective. It raises some likely threats to big telecommunication companies about the future of WiFi (so pay attention). Currently, this is a phenomenon gaining prominence in the states, and it is gradually hitting Australia (see links).

Cities across the US (and world) are adding themselves to the list of places where anybody can access free WiFi (and I mean anybody, no catches). This is a new type of ‘free’, one not being instigated by a corporation looking to sell its wares for access (Starbucks) or funded by an ad supported business model (as with digital music). It is different because its primary focus is not on profit it is rather utilitarian: ‘(to make) high-speed internet access more available and affordable’.  What is important is that places embracing this new model of wireless broadband aren’t little and obscure. For example, Texas (Corpus Christi), California (San Francisco), Massachusetts (Cambridge), the Government of Lebu, Chilli, and Pennsylvania (Philadelphia).

This is not something that any of the big service providers saw coming …

This is happening partially because the larger US companies have failed to convert their costly deals with cities into a live network; but mostly because they have not adapted to the ‘new world’ where everyone is a participant (whether they like it or not).  For example, in San Francisco EarthLink’s internet deal would have cost the city in the vicinity of US$14-$17 million (this was a deal that failed and subsequently fell through). Frankly, the residents didn’t and still don’t care. Instead they are taking part in creating their own ‘wireless cloud’ for a quarter of the amount it would have cost with EarthLink.

The company which is making it work is a group of volunteers and a startup called Meraki. Meraki is a company set up by two MIT classmates (who also created their own wireless network in Cambridge, MA). How it works is that volunteers house Meraki Minis (or repeaters) that carry the wireless signal around the city. Therefore when someone joins, the network gets bigger (for free). This maybe how wireless broadband transcends to the masses. Interestingly, there is someone funding Meraki, but they are not passing the fee onto the users – probably not a big surprise that company is Google.

[qi:045] Meraki, the wireless access point maker, today sent out emails informing its customers than it’s launching two enterprise access points that can be managed via the web (Meraki, in an attempt to hop on the cloud buzzwagon, calls this a cloud controller). That means Meraki is going to compete with folks like Cisco (s CSCO), Juniper (s JNPR) and Motorola (s MOT) for enterprise business. Meraki says its equipment costs half that off the average setup, which if true, would indeed put pressure on the margins of said competitors.

However, this is Meraki’s second or possibly even third attempt at finding a market for its mesh networking technology. The company has pushed municipal Wi-Fi and is also trying to make a business selling access points to hotels, business districts and apartments interested in Wi-Fi.  It has some cool technology and ideas, but can it transition from selling to municipalities and folks trying to set up local networks, to the enterprise? If it does so, it would make its transition from an open-source, cheap hardware provider to money-making-business complete.

One of the biggest challenges of hosting Green:Net, our sold-out conference about IT and sustainable technologies, was bringing enough bandwidth to a crowd of some 400 people. We held the event at the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco’s bucolic Presidio, surrounded by the deep blue ocean, majestic forest and equally majestic Golden Gate Bridge. It was an idyllic backdrop for an industry event aimed at those with a lot of idealism.

But while the location was aesthetically pleasing, as it was somewhat off the beaten path, the venue had its challenges — the biggest being network connectivity. With that in mind, we bought four business-class DSL connections from AT&T (s t) that were bonded together at a distant central office; we then received a connection to the venue over fiber. The total bandwidth was over 20 Mbps.

But that was only half the problem. We needed to get the bandwidth distributed over a large building with thick walls. On top of that we needed three wireless networks: one dedicated to sponsors, one to the media and most importantly, one dedicated to the attendees. So we turned to Meraki, a Mountain View, Calif.-based wireless network equipment maker.

Thanks to their 802.11n mesh network, the Wi-Fi worked like a charm, even in the basement, where our team had set up camp for the day.

In the main room Meraki installed two of their new “MR58″ devices, each of which have three so-called “N” radios and supply roughly 5X the capacity of a typical wireless access device. In the side rooms, they had their small plug-and-play access devices.

Outside in the yard, Meraki installed one of their solar-powered devices, which allowed folks to surf and chat while basking in the sun. All of this was managed through a web-cloud based controller, allowing one of the onsite Meraki engineers, Greg Williams, to walk around and test and tweak the network using just his iPhone.

Here are the final stats of the network for the entire day:

* Almost 400 users connected to the network
* About 13 GB of data was transferred on the network
* The majority of users accessed the MR58 devices in the main conference room
* Parklands B in the basement, the Cypress room on the first floor, and the Solar unit in the front of the venue also received a high degree of usage

Thanks to Meraki, in particular Ivan and Greg. You have no idea how great it was to have a wireless network that worked.

What could be more greentech: broadband without wires, powered by the sun. Wi-Fi network startup Meraki said today it’s started selling its solar-powered Wi-Fi gear. Interested parties can throw down either $1,300 or $1,500 for a kit that contains a 20- or 40-watt solar panel, the pole mount, the Wi-Fi solar radio and the connector; for locations that need more solar power than that, $850 buys a package of just the radio and connector without the panels. For now, the company is just selling its devices online through its web site and resellers, but not at retail outlets.

At the GigaOM Network, we’ve been following Meraki for quite a long time. More than two years ago, I interviewed Meraki CEO Sanjit Biswas about how he was going to turn his MIT Roofnet project into a sustainable business selling Wi-Fi mesh network hardware, software and services to deliver a grassroots movement of small wireless Internet Service Providers that could offer free and low-cost Wi-Fi. The company ended up raising money from Google, Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures and Northgate Capital, and it built a free Wi-Fi network throughout areas of San Francisco that put the city’s own (now defunct) free Wi-Fi plans to shame. It’s been busy.

Now, with its solar gear, it’s helping solve more broadband access problem. Many of the company’s target customers are in developing countries where communities, organizations and local ISPs are looking to offer broadband access for a low cost. These are the same places where the power grid could be spotty — so solar could be an important option for just keeping the network up and running. Meraki also says the solar kit can bring down the cost and time of setting up the system, because there are no electrical network connections, and there’s no need for electricians to be involved in the set up.

The solar package which includes a Wi-Fi repeater, is really for someone who is building their own network — a neighborhood, an apartment complex, a community group. If you want to buy their products to join a network that someone has already set up, you can buy their indoor and outdoor gear for less than $200. The solar radio itself uses a lithium iron phosphate battery — the company says its the same one used for the One Laptop Per Child project — and interestingly the battery charging is managed using Meraki’s web dashboard. (Could they partner with utilities somewhere in there?)

Meraki says solar customers already include the Harvard Square Business Association (HSBA), which added solar devices to its network in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass. The vendor that set up the Harvard Square network said it added the solar units as a way to expand the network in a short period of time.

Meraki, the Google and Sequoia-backed startup that focuses on citywide Wi-Fi networks, hasn’t let the demise of municipal Wi-Fi halt its efforts to make money or make the wireless network technology available in more places. It has scaled back considerably on its visions of open source, low-cost Wi-Fi for municipalities, instead focusing on Wi-Fi for apartment buildings, city squares and environments where someone is willing to pay to provide the service. Instead of connecting the world, Meraki wants to connect with paying customers. And that’s a good thing.

Today the company announced a Wi-Fi access point that plugs into a wall, and on Dec. 4 will release a lighter solar-powered access point to go places where power doesn’t. In a briefing about the products, it’s clear that Meraki still holds onto its altruistic views, with CEO Sanjit Biswas trumpeting the growth of Wi-Fi networks in Africa and small Chilean fishing villages. However, he’s quick to point out that hotels and apartment buildings can use the new Meraki products to rapidly install Wi-Fi networks that will cover a complex all the way from the pool to inside bedrooms.

In the last year, the startup has changed its business model several times, from trumpeting cheap hardware and charging a fee to access a dashboard, to tripling the price of its hardware and pushing ads. Such shifting hasn’t sat well with some citywide Wi-Fi network proponents, but the bottom line for many cities and customers is that Meraki’s Wi-Fi networks are still cheaper than those from vendors such as Cisco (s csco) or Juniper (s jnpr). As Wi-Fi becomes more important, Meraki’s capitalizing on its cheaper gear with new packages that offer to unwire a city street for $10,000, or today’s launch of a residential package designed for apartments and hotels that costs less than $5,000.

Wi-Fi is of growing interest for both consumers and ISPs. Earlier this year, Quentanna, a Wi-Fi chipmaker hoping to build a plug-in home access point to boost wireless signals, launched with a few ISP customers on board. A few weeks ago AT&T (s t) purchased hot-spot provider, Wayport for $275 million. If Meraki can figure out a way to spread Wi-Fi and make money, it could be in a good position as ubiquitous access to the Internet becomes more important for gadget-toting consumers. Wi-Fi is one of the most common gateways to the web, and even in a down economy Meraki thinks it can make money on the tools to build those gateways rather than by managing them. Meraki has realized that instead of saving the world, it needed to save its business.

Opening Their New OLPC Laptops!

This fall PS005 and Teaching Matters are piloting a new vision for school in the digital age; one where all members of the community can connect to learn at any time. PS 5 was selected as a pilot school for low cost computers (every child will receive an xo laptop). To ensure that ALL students can benefit from a computer that goes from school to home, Teaching Matters will work with the local community to pilot low-cost wireless internet access available to ALL students at home.

Our hope is to marry low cost laptops to low cost community wireless access- making a new vision of school possible for all students.

Low Cost Wireless Access — How?

We found out that almost all students lived within a four block radius of the school. Our plan is to experiment with ten to fifteen apartments (to start!) and create something called a mesh network. This technology extends the reach of existing internet access. In a city where many students lack access to the Internet at home, it is critical that communities start getting creative.

We are seeking private donors to expand this project. Contact us at lguastaferro@teachingmatters.org or call 212 870-3505.

Dailywireless.org has a write-up on cell towers going green.  Meraki, an SF based and Google funded company, gets an honorable mention for their low power solutions.

Read on…

Even if San Francisco’s high-profile, city-wide Wi-Fi network with EarthLink and Google was a fundamental flop, residents of the city that need it the most could still get some free wireless broadband. Meraki Networks, a San Francisco-based startup that makes mesh networking gear is building an ad-hoc San Francisco Wi-Fi network called “Free the Net.” At a press conference on Wednesday, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Meraki CEO Sanjit Biswas plan to announce a project that includes Meraki’s Wi-Fi networks throughout San Francisco’s affordable housing communities.

We’re not sure the extent of Newsom’s announcement, but supporting Meraki is the least the mayor can do after the previously botched San Francisco Wi-Fi network. And in any case, Meraki is actually footing the bill for the entire ad-hoc free Wi-Fi network, including the affordable housing section. Biswas says the cost of the entire network is in the low several millions.

Biswas says Meraki will set up its system of Wi-Fi repeaters and Internet broadband access in “all” of the low-income housing communities in San Francisco, including the Altamont Hotel, where Newsom and Biswas will make the announcement. This is the latest part of the company’s “Free the Net” project and Biswas tells us that the company will have access points in every neighborhood in the entire city by the end of the year.

In the past, EarthLink and Google were both linked to a Wi-Fi effort in San Francisco that really didn’t go anywhere due to political roadblocks. Both companies have backed away from their MuniFi efforts.

Google, however, was one of those who invested in the seed round Meraki raised in November 2006. The mesh gear maker raised $20 million in a Series B round from Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures and Northgate Capital back in January. Meraki could also be taking a page from Google when it comes to testing out ad-serving to support a free network. Biswas tells us that the company has tested out some contextual ads over the network.

City-wide Wi-Fi networks have been proving to not be viable in many cities and communities, but Meraki’s type of very low-cost, ad-hoc networks seems to be best suited for the technology. For just a few million, a company like Meraki can slowly add localized Wi-Fi hotspots in communities that actively want and will use the technology. Newsom certainly wants to work with the company to close San Francisco’s digital divide. We’ll check out the press conference later today and snap some pics of the mayor’s do — and the unwiring festivities.

PLATFORM FOR PRESIDENT: FREE WI-FI

As provided by Wired, the above map represents free Wi-Fi locations across the United States as they exist today or are under construction. Click on the image above for a closer look.

I have been a huge supporter of free ad-supported Wi-Fi for some time now. After watching debate after democratic nominee debate focused on the war efforts in Iraq and universal health care, I’d love a change of direction.

Free Wi-Fi

Providing free municipality-wide Wi-Fi would empower those that need a different perspective and a push in the right direction. The internet allows access to an endless stream of information as well as groups of people with thoughts on just about any topic.

Free Wi-Fi is a service not only facilitating a community of techno-enabled; it’s also a service enabling the underprivileged. The cost of a computer has fallen drastically while the monthly broadband subscription price has remained high, in relation to what low income families can afford. Below is an example of high design meets low cost in the XO laptop created specifically for children in impoverished nations as well as right here at home.

XO Laptop

The Beauty of Free Wi-Fi

Everyone benefits. Advertisers benefit from a large audience and targeting abilities previously not available. The public benefits from the free service.

The Red Tape

Government bureaucracy insanity.

Solutions for Now

Below are a few sites that allow users to quickly find neighboring free Wi-Fi access points. Hey Citysearch and Yelp! Could you go ahead and add this feature to your ratings system? Thanks. For more information on the digital divide, click here.

I Love Free WiFi

Great site for offering the more coffee cup experience as opposed to the park/hotel experience.

gWiFi

Wi-Fi locations are a bit sparse but I like the easy interface.

Meraki

I commend Meraki for offering Wi-Fi on a mesh network rather than through stand alone Wi-Fi access points. This mesh network is cheaper than Google’s original plan to offer city-wide free Wi-Fi. Now the only lingering question will be: Will local advertising revenue support the cost associated with establishing citywide Wi-Fi? Well, San Francisco is a great market to test this out in.

JiWire

Nice set of locations but I prefer seeing this on a map rather than as a list.

Frankly, the killer app in locating a free Wi-Fi network is most likely toting around an iPhone and selecting a network whenever your beloved friend asks you if you’d like to. Thank you iPhone. That said, many can’t afford an iPhone for locating access and therefore a city-wide solution is certainly of value to so many.  If someone could focus on empowering the masses by offering the information to lead them there, they’d have my vote.

Another use for an iPod Touch.

Sounds a bit like the apple remote to me, but as the article says, the touch can also act as a keyboard (if you are prepared to get used to the thumb-tapping interface).

With companies like Meraki slowly rolling-out blanket wi-fi access (and Meraki is part-owned by google, so they’re doing this potentially to add value to the Android phone) it won’t be long before the Touch can actually be used viably as a VoIP phone.

Give it a couple more years though… we’re a good 3-years behind the tech here in OZ.