{"id":7286,"date":"2017-12-27T18:13:30","date_gmt":"2017-12-28T02:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=7286"},"modified":"2017-12-27T18:16:38","modified_gmt":"2017-12-28T02:16:38","slug":"internet-san-franciscans-heres-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/12\/27\/internet-san-franciscans-heres-happen\/","title":{"rendered":"Internet for all San Franciscans? Here\u2019s how it could happen"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By\u00a0Rachel Swan<\/a><\/p>\n

June 7, 2017<\/span>\u00a0(SFChronicle.com)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Photo: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>A man checks his phone near Mission Dolores Park, one of the city\u2019s 32 parks that received free Wi-Fi several years ago.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In a city where so much information is tweeted, emailed, Skyped or texted, thousands of people are getting left behind.<\/p>\n

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There are kids who trudge to the library to find an Internet connection so they can do their homework. Mothers who have to choose each month between buying a Muni pass and paying the Wi-Fi bill. Seniors still using sputtery dial-up service.<\/p>\n

Their stories are helping propel Mark Farrell, San Francisco supervisor and rumored 2019 mayoral candidate, as the primary backer and evangelist for a citywide broadband network that would treat the Internet as if it were a public roadway: The city would lay fiber-optic cable underground and contract with private companies to deliver fast, inexpensive service to all residents and businesses.<\/p>\n

If Farrell pulls it off, San Francisco would become the largest city in the country to have such a system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sad reality is that San Francisco is the innovation capital of the world, and more than 100,000 San Francisco residents still do not have Internet access at home,\u201d Farrell said, citing statistics from a budget and legislative analyst\u2019s report he ordered last year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"SamPhoto: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Sam Nayrouz makes a phone call while hanging out at Mission Dolores Park, which received free Wi-Fi through a Google gift.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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An additional 50,000 residents have rickety dial-up connections, he said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s criminal, in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Confronting this disparity, the supervisor and his supporters have started characterizing the Internet as a utility, just like water or electricity service. They see publicly owned broadband as the next battlefront for a city that recently took on Pacific Gas and Electric by creating its own clean energy system.<\/p>\n

The idea isn\u2019t new. Chattanooga, Tenn., has a publicly owned fiber network that\u2019s run by the city\u2019s electric utility. Officials in Kansas City, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo., brokered an agreement with Google Fiber to run a network through the cities in 2011. Stockholm began laying cable in 1994 and now has a vast subterranean system that it leases to service providers, the model San Francisco will most likely adopt.<\/p>\n

City politicians have long talked about creating a universal Internet system that would put San Francisco\u2019s technical abilities in line with its social credos, but past attempts have belly-flopped.<\/p>\n

In 2003, then-Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Chris Daly got the city to fund a $300,000 study on city-controlled Internet, arguing it would be what Ammiano termed \u201ca great (social) equalizer.\u201d But they failed to put together a concrete plan.<\/p>\n

Mayor Gavin Newsom picked up the effort the following year, proposing free Wi-Fi throughout the city and negotiating a contract under which EarthLink would build and install the network, with Google providing the service. The deal fell apart after EarthLink backed out in 2007.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Katie and Aaron Smith take a photo while visiting Alamo Square Park on Monday, June 5, 2017. The park offers a free San Francisco WiFi hotspot.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the intervening years, San Francisco inched toward its politicians\u2019 goals of Internet equity. In 2010, Newsom began spreading free Wi-Fi to all of the city\u2019s public housing projects. Three years later, Farrell staked his political future on municipal Internet when he helped secure a $600,000 gift from Google that allowed the city to buy and install Wi-Fi equipment in 32 parks. New statistics from the Department of Technology\u00a0show<\/a>\u00a0that more than half a million devices connect to the city\u2019s wireless network each month.<\/p>\n

Farrell began laying the foundation for a far more ambitious plan \u2014 laying fiber throughout the city, including areas like Visitacion Valley and the Bayview, where the cost of digging up the street far exceeds the immediate profit for any carrier.<\/p>\n

The supervisor built momentum for the idea by forming a coalition of neighborhood groups and a panel of academics to publish reports on the importance of a municipal fiber network. Farrell and Mayor Ed Lee also secured $600,000 in city funding for a consultant, CTC Technology and Energy, to calculate cost estimates.<\/p>\n

Depending on what infrastructure model they settle on, they may have to pitch a bond measure to voters.<\/p>\n

There could be risks \u2014 or alternatively, a big payoff \u2014 for Farrell, who is devoting his political capital to the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nice thing about Wi-Fi is that it costs less up front, and you can install it before the next election,\u201d said Christopher Mitchell, a community broadband expert at the Institute for Local Self Reliance, an advocacy group in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

But he noted that Farrell could face intense opposition from big telecom companies like Comcast and AT&T, which provide most of the Internet service and infrastructure in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be a scare campaign involving print mailers, telephone calls and radio messages, saying that community broadband will threaten city finances,\u201d Mitchell said.<\/p>\n

Farrell is a political moderate with strong Silicon Valley ties \u2014 before entering politics he worked as a lawyer for tech companies and as an investment banker \u2014 but he has reached out to progressive former Supervisor Eric Mar, who has helped lead the neighborhood coalition and conduct surveys that illustrate how uneven the Internet service is in a city known as a tech capital.<\/p>\n

\u201cI helped pull in a lot of seniors and nonprofits, and I helped persuade them to be more trustful that a big-tent approach could succeed, even though we weren\u2019t successful a decade ago,\u201d Mar said.<\/p>\n

Over the past few months, Farrell has also backed legislation to nudge the city closer to a municipally controlled system.<\/p>\n

In December, the Board of Supervisors passed his bill requiring landlords to allow their tenants to use any state-licensed carrier. His law mandating that all new developments include fiber conduits passed in February. He is also pushing a bill that would allow Internet carriers to install fiber-optic cables in sidewalks, a low-cost form of infrastructure that would help small companies compete with AT&T and Comcast.<\/p>\n

In a recent interview, Farrell downplayed the rumors about a 2019 mayoral bid, saying he\u2019ll decide \u201cwhen the time is right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether he can turn citywide broadband into a viable campaign platform is an open question. It\u2019s a move that could position Farrell as an effective challenger to Mark Leno, said Jason McDaniel, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of bridging a digital divide, of fixing race and class inequality \u2014 that\u2019s a message designed to be attractive to a more progressive, left-leaning audience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But some analysts view broadband as one of those important but boring issues that doesn\u2019t have the same urgency as homelessness or protecting immigrants from deportation.<\/p>\n

Broadband isn\u2019t a topic of \u201coverriding concern\u201d in San Francisco, said political strategist Maggie Muir. She said voters \u201cface other more compelling issues every day when they walk out the door.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email:\u00a0rswan@sfchronicle.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Twitter:\u00a0@rachelswan<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Rachel Swan June 7, 2017\u00a0(SFChronicle.com)\u00a0 Photo: Noah Berger, Special To The Chronicle.\u00a0\u00a0A man checks his phone near Mission Dolores Park, one of the city\u2019s 32 parks that received free Wi-Fi several years ago.   In a city where so much information is tweeted, emailed, Skyped or texted, thousands of people… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7286"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7286"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7289,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7286\/revisions\/7289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}