I say no

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.

I say no

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?

I say no

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

I say no

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

I say no

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 say no

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.

I say no

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.

I say no

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 say no

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.

I say no

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.

I say no

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

I say no

There are a lot of things not working in Berkeley - watering systems in parks, trash on the streets. I'm sure schools need supplies and other needs are widespread. These needs should seem more important to me. And I'm sure there isn't money for everything.

I say no

Why should the city provide free wi-fi? Why not free cell phones within the city? Or heaven forbid, free parks, recreation services, street cleaning and all the other things that the city is supposed to do but can't because it doesn't have enough money anyway and then goes off and decides to do more things it can't afford. Make priorities folks.

I say no

The City of Berkeley cannot even manage to perform its basic 20th century (as in last century)municipal obligations such as keeping algae from growing in the gutter in front of my house (because there is no underground storm drain system), repairing its roads, or helping/removing the violent and offensive vagrants that flock to this city because they know their anti-social behavior will be tolerated. I would like to see the City prove it is capable of managing to attract and retain brick and mortar businesses such as book stores, violin and music shops, etc. before they start to mess with really complicated issues such as electricity, binary code and the protection of personal information. Anyone who does not have internet at home can come sit next to me in any cafe of library - so don't make this a race or economic status issue, there is already a great amount of free internet provided by the public and private sector; anyone who wants it can get it easily. And I don't think a monopoly agreement with a single provider serves the best interest of the public either- nothing about the deal would be 'free' in that the consumers would be paying with collection and sale of their personal information/habits to marketing firms. Jonathan Bailey

I say no

I believe in small government and anything beyond the minimal services I'd be against.

I say no

Like a lot of Berkeley ideas, this one initially soujnds good, but fails the test on close examination.

First: nothing is "free". When the City takes over a utility, or provides "free" videos through its library system, it assumes costs previously borne by private companies. It pays those costs through taxes. Berkeley's inability to fund even essential services (despite the highest muni tax rates in the state) is notorious. Until it can pay for adequate infrastructure, fire and police, Berkeley should not be taking on optional services which will in the end be paid for by homeowners.

Second: there are serious technical obstacles to efficient, cost-effective WI-FI. These include the speed (slower than DSL) of down and up-loading, the lack of dedicated spectrum for transmission of large data packages, low power limits (which in turn limit building penetration)(see The April 9 Chronicle article on WI-FI in Taipei). A number of privately funded WI-FI operations have failed. Why should the City commit public dollars to an unproven scheme?

I say no

This is not about providing free WiFi to residents - it's about providing free WiFi to everyone. Would we be required to meet minimum service standards at the perimeter of the City for the "Citizens", therefore providing it for Oakland, Albany, Emeryville? If a citizen cannot get it at their home in some remote Berkeley corner, would we be required to provide an alternative? There are many ways to offer something similar to this, but the City has far more important priorities -

I say no

When the City can balance their budget, then this expense might be considered. Many locations have Wi-Fi now and another City agency and associated cost is not justified.

I say no

Free Wi-Fi is an absurd, wasteful, and signficantly dangerous idea. Far from a progressive development, it is essentially a trap for the unwary City -- a Trojan Horse.

First, a Wi-Fi network is by no means free. There are substantial expenses in building and maintaining such a network. If a network is "free to access", that means only that it will be paid for by someone other than the recipients of free access (or that those recipients are paying in ways they are unaware of). Will it be tax dollars? Will it be a sell-off of demographic data about the network behavior of Berkeley citizens? Will it be our individual time and attention as we skip past ads?

Everyone with a smattering of economic theory -- any kind from marxist to Chicago school -- should recognize that if the network costs $N to operate then the operators intend to extract at least $N in value from the network. Since the users aren't paying in cash, how will they pay?

Suppose the answer is "ads". For the mere nuisance of a few ads, we all get free Wi-Fi, right? No advertiser will buy advertising space unless they are able to target the specific demographics they are reaching. Thus, an advertising broker is necessarily in the business of helping advertisers track the behavior of the population of audience members. To install free Wi-Fi is to put Berkeley to work for a third party. It is the opposite of freedom. Other revenue models have similar problems.

Second, Wi-Fi is a dinosaur in the making. It is not the first wireless Internet technology that attempted to blanket the Bay Area and it won't be the last. Informed technologists are aware, I'm sure, that spectrum allocation (which "radio frequencies" are used for what purpose) is in a highly contentious, unsettled state. There is a significant possibility that in as little as, say, 10 years, Wi-Fi will simply stop working. Any investment Berkeley makes in this boondoggle, especially while we have rotating fire station closures and similar fundamental problems, is an obscene waste.

Third, for those who think this idea is somehow to the benefit of poor people, please show me the testimony. I would like to see some serious, public, one-on-one conversations between technologists who can speak to the risks and the (alleged) teaming masses of people crying out for this form of Internet access which they can't otherwise afford.

Fourth, it is now very well known that parental best practices include close supervision of Internet usage by children, adolescents, and teenagers -- yet free Wi-Fi completely negates that possibility.

In conclusion, should Berkeley go this route, then probably the next appropriate step is to begin a grass roots effort to block its implementation in court (on any of a large number of grounds).

Regards,
-t

I say no

The City of Berkeley has more important things to spend its money on than free Wi-Fi. It will undermine local ISPs and expose users to both hacker attacks, government snooping, and government content filtering.