Citywide Wi-Fi comes to Bay Area
Foster City, Calif., just south of San Francisco, plans to launch its citywide Wi-Fi network on Monday.
The city of 30,000 residents is using Mountain View-based MetroFi as its service provider. MetroFi is already powering citywide Wi-Fi deployments in other California cities including San Jose, Cupertino, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara. The Wi-Fi service will allow users to surf the Web at speeds of up to 1 megabits per second.
The service, which will be supported by advertising, is free to all users.
Other cities in the San Francisco Bay Area are also looking into deploying Wi-Fi. The city of San Francisco is still in the planning stages of its citywide network. EarthLink and Google won the bid earlier this year to provide the service.
The San Mateo County Telecommunications Authority is also planning a regional Wi-Fi service. In September, it selected a group of companies, including Cisco Systems and IBM, to build its network.
Marguerite Reardon has been a CNET News reporter since 2004, covering cell phone services, broadband, citywide Wi-Fi, the Net neutrality debate, as well as the ongoing consolidation of the phone companies. E-mail Maggie.
