LAFCO hears progress report on San Francisco’s citywide Wi‑Fi negotiations; privacy, revenue and municipal ownership debated

San Francisco’s Local Agency Formation Commission on Tuesday heard a status report from the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services on the citywide wireless broadband initiative and its negotiations with EarthLink and other potential providers.

Brian Roberts, senior policy analyst at DTIS, told the commission that negotiations with EarthLink remain active and that the department is posting weekly disclosures of negotiation documents at sfgov.org/techconnect. Roberts said the city is still deciding the formal contract vehicle — “it kind of falls in between a franchise and a major encroachment permit” — and that staff has negotiated a four‑year initial term with opportunities for renewal rather than an automatic extension.

The report focused on technical, privacy and financial elements of the prospective agreement. Roberts said privacy protections under discussion for the free tier include allowing anonymous access, limiting disclosure to third parties, and setting a retention limit of 60 days for non‑aggregated location information; he added that the network operator would hold access to that data but that users could opt out of location‑tracking services. "We've also addressed the…