Jennifer Brown, the reason why Worthington blocked it is because AirBears is paid for by the students through the University. He wants any free WiFi in Berkeley to be paid for through Berkeley tax dollars, not student tuition.

not a good use of our ever-so-limited city funds.

Or if you do fund it, shorten the weak city of berkeley funded 4th of july fireworks. T

(I know it is a different issue) The fireworks in 2007 were soooo boring. Shorten them and make them more exciting or keep them at the same excitement level and save money. 10 minutes is enough. After 10 minutes I found my self saying, oh look, the money for that one could have been well used at a community center ... oh look, there goes dozens of sidewalk repairs ... oh look, that could have been fire prevention work in the hills .... and now, drug prevention work with teens ...sigh.

This sounds like a great idea, but it requires a lot of highly skilled expertise to make it work correctly, to make it work for free, and to make sure it is usable.

In addition, I do not know of anyone that is experiencing real hardship in their lives because of the absence of this service.

There is no proven implementation that works fast enough for a large semi-urban area. Technically, this requires a lot of expensive infrastructure, and to provide that, any company will want to have exclusivity to offer added services or advertising to recoup the huge costs, and to also make profit.

If the city were to run this on their own, they would need to acquire the technical expertise for the specific service, and in addition demonstrate a proven track record of running it efficiently.

Running this as an economically sustainable service is not easy to achieve. It requires a lot of experience in public utilities to structure the service properly so that it pays for itself. Most likely the only way this can be done is to provide some really slow bandwidth for free, and to offer some monthly-fee service for things like sending email and watching movies online.

This is not a significant need for a city like ours to function. It certainly puts us on the map as a trend-setter, but we do have other more significant real-life issues to effectively deal with.

Also, we are not talking about no internet at all, versus internet for everyone. Currently, there are a few different modes of connectivity in Berkeley at various cost levels. I personally pay $15 per month for DSL service, and while I am not happy that it goes to a big telecom, it is a very reasonable cost, and I can do a lot of heavy duty work at the low bandwidth I get). There really would be no point in implementing something city-wide if everyone's property taxes increased by $300 every year.

There are no alternatives discussed. How about taking back the easement provided to comcast, and offering free cable internet to all berkeley residents' as is done in the city of Alameda? the really high speeds available on cable modems would support the use of wifi access points to everyone that wants to make a hotspot available in their neighborhood.

I like the fact that the city has looked into the matter, and is on top of the latest trends, etc. But, in my opinion this is a fringe area, and does not cover as much "real" need, as, say, a solar roofs program might provide. How about we use our resources to negotiate much lower prices for a bulk purchase of solar panels, inverters, and installation services for Berkeley residents?

The arguments against this proposal are so specious that I am protesting against the NO position!
The only argument AGAINST that I appreciate is the one that asks why other more egalitarian public needs are not met by offering free services - like mass transit, etc. I like that question!

There are so many other things the city could be spending my and your tax dollars on. This is NOT a "FREE" service.

questionable health impacts- we just do not know. fall back to the precautionary principal

If SF is a model then too much has to be given to provider

does not address digital divide if you do not have wifi hardware

This will be a great public service

I think we can spend the money that it would take to build a wi-fi network for all of Berkeley on better things. In the past few years we have cut city job and closed Fire Stations.
What is more important? Being able to log on to the Internet, or having our city safer?

I understand that the University offered to extend its campus wi-fi, Air Bears, to within a one mile radius of the campus, which would include most of Berkeley. This sounds like a win for the city.
However, it was blocked by, I was told, Kriss Worthington. Can anyone fill in the details here? Why would a city councilman prevent the university's technology and expertise from benefitting the city of Berkeley?

I strongly support this measure.

A friend who lives in Mountain View (where Google is providing free Wifi) says it has not worked. He cannot get reception even though he can ee the antenae. Also the free wifi is slow and then they residents are encouraged to buy and upgrade to faster service.

We should be ahead of the curve.

I agree with position of Vivek Hutheesing

The costs associated with this measure, from rolling out the hardware to supplying bandwidth for the entire city will be outrageous.

The limits associated with such a service, both in regard to the amount of bandwidth that would be available to residents (the bandwidth:cost ratio works against a city full of tech savvy students and residents who engage with the internet in a bandwidth intensive manner: movies, music), as well as necessary measures to counteract other potential abuses of the system (viruses, file sharing - which would inevitably become the city's responsibility), also work to make the option unattractive.

If the city feels that it is so necessary to provide quality internet service to its residents, an upgrade to the existing telecommunications infastructure would serve them far better than the implementation of a city-wide wireless network.

The health ramifications of Wireless have not been thoroughly explored. Articles in the newspapers in Germany have recently brought to light this issue. Last fall, The Utne Reader had a long article on the possible health problems. Let us not have another case of implementing technology in the name of convenience without knowing what the heath issues are or could be.
I also question the reasons behind providing free wireless to residents. I would rather have the money spent on mental health services and food services for the homeless. Thank you.

I work for a Silicon Valley networking company. My company loves it when a city decides to provide Wi-Fi. There will be a LOT of hardware sold, and a LOT of support and maintenance. Our stock price will go up. The Berkeley bureaucracy will become more unwieldy and costly.
Free Wi-Fi will be paid for by the home owners in Berkeley. I think we should spend our tax dollars on appropriate services, not Internet access.

Many have already said it: Berkeley isn't even serving responsible law-abiding taxpaying citizens properly as it is. There are not enough police to effectively deter the ratpacking/mugging and drive-bys in Southwest Berkeley, much less ticket the gazillion noise pollution offenders, dumpers, taggers, etc. Fire stations have been on rotating brownouts for a couple years now. CoB has to get its priorities adjusted in a major way.

City wide free Wi-Fi supports the democratization of the internet

It's a wast of money, it encourages people to be tied to their little electronic boxes, and it adds to the cosmic energy pollution

Everyone needs access to the net these days, and it is especially helpful for travelers, students, and other temporary residents. NKS