Saturday, January 12, 2008

Meraki to Tackle City-wide Wi-Fi for San Francisco

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/01/meraki-to-tackl.html

Meraki to Tackle City-wide Wi-Fi for San Francisco
By Terrence Russell
January 04, 2008

City-wide Wi-Fi might not be a pipe dream for San Francisco residents after all. After successfully rolling out mesh networks in 6 San Francisco neighborhoods, Meraki Inc. has announced its plans to blanket the entire city with coverage by the end of 2008.

Google and Earthlink hatched a similar plan for a municipal Wi-Fi project last year that ultimately fizzled. However, Meraki believes that by bypassing coverage for the public safety sector, relying on volunteers, and installing dozens of wireless gateways on rooftops it can rapidly roll out coverage.

"This groundbreaking network in San Francisco will show the world that with Meraki's unique approach to building networks, we can quickly bring broadband Internet access to every city in the world," said Meraki CEO, Sanjit Biswas.

A $20 million Series B from Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, Northgate Capital has ensured that Meraki will be able to eat the cost of the new equipment, while users can still volunteer their own bandwidth with Meraki's repeaters. To find out how to get involved in your own neighborhood, be sure to visit Meraki's website.

1 comment:

Angela Flynn said...

For people like me who are electro sensitive this is a total disaster. I had a wireless router in my bedroom for two years. I sat about two feet from it. After a year and a half I developed a full body muscle ache, creaky joints, had trouble sleeping and could not concentrate enough to read a book. Fortunately I moved and did not get hooked back up for over a month. My symptoms went away. I have now become sensitized to this non ionizing radiation. Believe me it is not fun or by choice. I loved wifi. More and more people are becoming sensitized as the radiation poisoning is cumulative. I suggest a visit to www.bioinitiative for a published review of more than 2,000 studies which demonstrate the bio effects from non ionizing radiation. www.emrpolicy.org is another good site.