Meraki rolls out free WiFi throughout San Francisco

January 4, 2008 | Matt Marshall | Comments |
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meraki-solar.jpgMeraki, the Google Mafia-run company which builds WiFi repeaters that lets residents surf the Web for free, now says it aims to spread its WiFi network across the entire city of San Francisco.

The company’s offering has proven popular in testing, with more than 40,000 people using Meraki’s WiFi connections in its initial two-square mile pilot test in San Francisco. People learn about the service through word of mouth, or by seeing Meraki’s “Free the Net” network name when they scan available wireless networks for their computer use.

While popular thus far, the company has a ways to go. People are using the WiFi network mainly for free, and so the company has yet to make money. Meraki provides the WiFi repeaters for free, which makes the service possible. People can access the service without owning a repeater. Sanjit Biswas, CEO and co-founder of Meraki, said the company doesn’t plan to make money from selling the repeaters. Rather, it is trying to showcase its technology in San Francisco — so that it can provide its WiFi systems to developing countries such as Brazil or India. That’s how it plans to make money.

It has also just raised $20 million more in financing to help it. The second round of funding comes from DAG Ventures, which led the round, and existing investors Sequoia Capital and Northgate Capital.

The company has an intriguing back-end. It uses solar-powered panels on rooftops to provide power for the operation (see image at top; Meraki employee John Tso installs a panel on rooftop). In San Francisco, the company’s network overcame “thousands” of cases of interference, it said, allowing Meraki to deliver almost 1Mbps of access to each user.

It’s testing an ad-supported model, too, so that it can sell wireless operators on the idea.

The company expects to have every SF neighborhood up and running by mid-year.

 

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About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Developing countries typically have much higher traffic costs and much lower ad per capita markets. Not sure at all if the company breaks even. In SF, traffic costs much less but even then, for how many weeks will $20M last if everyone will start using this network to download torrents?

    Is there any hard technology in this business (e.g. method of overcoming interference in saturated spectrum) or is it a pure service business?
  • I wonder what fon.com thinks about this.
  • Shun
    Higher traffic costs? What, like Meraki can't just set its own traffic costs? Surely, they should know what the costs are going to be, if they are thinking about entering the developing countries market.

    Apparently, they do have some proprietary extensions to the 802.11 stack which allows them to bypass interference to an extent. Whether it will be enough to offset an already ultra-unwired city like San Francisco remains to be seen.

    Also, I like the solar angle, but that's so Bay Area. They'd be better off launching in Los Angeles, come to think of it. Better start building after this set of Arctic Storms comes riding down. Otherwise, it's goodbye repeaters.

    A better question would be: is there any way to set my indoor wireless router to link up with a Meraki repeater? If Meraki were able to leverage the power of the folks who already have the hardware, but are sick of paying monthly fees for service, they might be able to get this project off the ground.
  • MetalGuru
    I'm using their Free SF Net connection right now. It's dfinitely OK.

    It is slower than my Comcast + 54g connection but it is Free. I did a speed test a few days ago and got around 600k bps down side.

    I'm going to add a mini inside and an outdoor antenna and see if the service does even better. If it does I may cancel my Comcast connection.
  • MB
    MetalGuru, is it you?
  • thanks
    Very Good & very help me
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