Yet another reason to love "The City That Knows How": company Meraki is planning on having free Wi-Fi set up in all of the city by the end of 2008, with a service called Free The Net. Can you believe that? Heck yes. Last month, about 6,000 users were logged on, as of now it's 100,000.

The company is accomplishing this by installing repeaters (electronic devices which repeat a signal without degradation) on rooftops, going about it neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood, with the permission and assistance of the city. Here's a statement about the company released back in January:

After raising an additional $20 million from venture capitalists, Meraki decided it had enough money to set up free Wi-Fi in San Francisco's remaining 47 square miles. Meraki probably will have to give away 10,000 to 15,000 repeaters, estimated Sanjit Biswas, the Mountain View-based company's chief executive.

Hm, I guess venture capitalism can have its benefits. Aside from VCs, municipal branches also support Meraki, so as a result, it's completely free. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around this, I keep waiting to hear the scam; what a progressive city.

At the moment they're focusing on affordable housing areas, which is sweet, really. And more than that, in one of these places in particular, the Valencia Garden Complex, they've set up a computer lab where workshops and programs are hosted. Developed back in April, it allows people to utilize resume and academic services.

Honestly, the more I hear about this place the more I want to go. It's odd to know of a city that actually seems to really care about its people, especially the not so well off. More or less (I've moved around a lot), I'm from a small city myself, the province of which is built on that small town, everyone supporting everyone mentality, but even there most people just bitch about how much of their money those on welfare are taking from them. In SF they give them free Internet! Well, I'm oversimplifying the issue, but it is still a valid point I think.

Obviously, it's not a perfect system, bandwidth is shared and all, but I expect the service will only improve over time. There's talk of it being set up in other cities, as well. All things considered, would you like to see the same setup in your city or town?