HellaFrank

At one point, the idea of free municipal wireless Internet across the country seemed like the new frontier for Internet access. Everyone would have access and people would no longer be tied down to accessing from certain locations. Philadelphia was one of the first to blanket their city with Internet, but that project, just like those of San Francisco and many other cities and towns ended when Earthlink unexpectedly shut down it’s municipal wireless organization. Big and powerful telecoms like Verizon weren’t happy about these plans either and undoubtedly affected the success of them as well. From a really great article in Slate:

Verizon spent more than $3 million to lobby the [Pennsylvania] state government to pass a bill preventing cities and townships in Pennsylvania from offering broadband or wireless services unless the phone company has refused to do so. More than a dozen states have similar statutes on the books that make it difficult for government to get into the wireless broadband business. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed a law in June that prevents municipalities from offering broadband if there are competing private services. Nevada bans most cities and counties from offering telecommunications services. Texas flatly prohibits it.

Fast forward a couple of years and a company called Meraki is now breathing life back into municipal wireless. How? By taking an open-source, community powered approach that bypasses telecoms and the government. Meraki sells and gives away their tiny piece of hardware, called a repeater, that allows anyone within a one-block radius to receive a 1-megabit wireless signal — three times faster than anything Earthlink promised. Eventually these repeaters will be networked across all of San Francisco, creating a seamless and open wireless network. The best part? It’s individuals powering the network with hardware provided by an independent company — the government and big telecoms can do nothing about it, though San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and the board of supervisors fully support it anyway (and seem to be taking credit for it too).

It’s a great example of how the power of the masses is far stronger than any telecom or government agency. Meraki has created a simple piece of technology, yet with widespread usage, it becomes so much more than that. For example, the company is starting by offering free repeaters for low-income housing developments in San Francisco so people who struggle to afford Internet can have it in their homes.

And don’t feel bad for Meraki, while they are probably not making much money right now, providing such a core service, much like Google does with search, opens up endless possibilities for business development in the future.

Open-source, community and the power of the crowd is not just the future of the Internet, it’s the future of Internet access.