Update: See also a more detailed and thoughtful analysis by Muniwireless’s Esme Vos.

Some people have a hard time understanding the criticisms of the Earthlink wi-fi deal for San Francisco. To them, it’s like complaining about the quality of free ice cream. “People are giving you free ice cream and you’re complaining about not enough flavors?” It turns out, of course, that the wi-fi deal is a little less tasty than ice cream.

If the wi-fi deal were free ice cream, here’s what it would be like:

  • It’s the only kind of ice cream you can eat. The Earthlink-run network will essentially saturate the 2.4 GHz frequency. There’s no way that anyone else could come along and put up a competing network, and even smaller local networks (for a company or an apartment building, or whatever) will have to work around the Earthlink network.
  • It comes in very small cups. The free tier of service is meant to be 300kb, which is substantially slower than most existing cable or DSL, and significantly slower than residents of other cities will be getting for free. Users of the free service will be using those tiny little flat wood tasting spoons.
  • Not everybody can have it. The agreement doesn’t actually require coverage in every neighborhood, or for anybody above the second floor. So if you live in an apartment building in theTenderloin or anywhere in the Bayview, no ice cream for you! The city explicitly cannot terminate the agreement for this.
  • You pay in other ways. You may get a cup of ice cream without paying any money, but in exchange, Google knows everything you eat and where and when you ate it.
  • We’re stuck with this kind of ice cream for a long time. The deal is nominally for four years. However, it more-or-less automatically extends for three more four year terms. So it’s really a 16-year agreement. Even if it gets cancelled after the first term, there’s an 18-month coasting period, so it’s at a minimum a five-and-a-half year contract.
  • There’s nothing for people who don’t already eat ice cream. The amount of money the city’ll get from this to address Digital Inclusion issues is pretty small: The city’s estimating $300k a year, but there’s no guarantee, and most likely not all of that will go for digital inclusion. There’s also a pretty lame “Digital Inclusion Product”, which is essentially a moderately-discounted premium account, but without the repeater box people’ll need to get good inside reception.
  • It doesn’t feed people. OK, so the analogy breaks down a little here, but the main fact remains that the initial idea behind the wi-fi network was that it was the central component in an effort to provide meaningful internet access for all San Franciscans. In the agreement’s current form, it seems unlikely to do that.