Meraki wires square mile in SF with WiFi

March 5, 2007 | Matt Marshall

Seeking to spur its growth, Google-backed start-up Meraki is wiring up a square mile in a hip part of San Francisco with free Internet access by giving away its mesh WiFi router product.

The region, which has 15,000 residents, covers Mission Dolores Park through the Castro and Duboce Park Neighborhoods and up to Alamo Square Park.

We covered the company previously here.

This could effectively double Meraki’s users. It has 15,000 users already. The question is how it plans to make money, if it has to keep acting as a catalyst by giving these away or relying on philanthropists to pay for them.

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About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.