I’ve spent some time looking at what looks to be the TechConnect Request for Proposal (RFP). As I mentioned, the RFP seems to be oriented totally to the physical wi-fi network. It makes no mention of any of the other three pillars of the TechConnect proposal: equipment, focused content, and training and support, other than the statement “Proposers shall elaborate on how their proposal supports these programs.” I’ve written before that I think this is dangerous. If the network part of this goes ahead without real, tangible commitment to the community-service part, low-income people, non-english speakers, and people of color will be left behind.

The RFP envisions two tiersof access: Basic (which would be free) and Premium (which presumably would not). There are a list of requirements for the two levels of service, but only the Premium level has bandwidth requirements: 1 megabit per second. That’s not an embarassing number out of the gate, but it needs to apply to the basic level as well. And it should be subject to renegotiation as technology improves and speeds rise.

As far as the other content that’s in the proposal, there are some big issues:

1. The privacy section is a list of questions, not a list of requirements. It’s conceivable that the network provider could track individual users’ activities, and use or sell that information. We need to be protected from that.
2. There is no explicit requirement that providers not block specific uses of the network. If Comcast were to win the bid, for example, they could block video broadcasts over the network. It looks as Voice Over IP is specifically protected, but other uses are not.
3. There are no requirements that the services be comparable across different neighborhoods, or that the 95% coverage required be spread evenly across the city.

Overall, the proposal doesn’t provide any guide to a vision for SF’s municipal network. Admittedly, it’s a draft, but in its current form, the RFP gives no indication of what the network will provide San Franciscans, and how it will help to solve the Digital Divide.

Interestingly, much of the propsal seems to have been copied straight from the Philadelphia RFP. San Francisco is using the same consultant as Philly, so that’s probably not surprising.

Interestingly, the Philadelphia RFP only requires that the network provider (who ended up being Earthlink) describe their plans for allowing their subcribers to access other fee-based WiFi networks, and vice-versa, while San Francisco’s seems to require that they strike an agreement to do so.

Conclusion
Overall, then, I see a bunch of minor issues, which pale next to what I see are two major ones:

1. The proposal makes only a token reference to the community-support parts of TechConnect, and
2. The level of detail that specifying the service levels and conditions for the Premium tier goes into makes it obvious that there was a lot more thought that went into the Premium tier. Frankly, I think that the premim tier stuff will sort itself out. The important part is to ensure that the provider doesn’t make the Basic (free) tier so crappy that the people who can afford it upgrade to the fancy version immediately, leaving the people who need it most stuck with a system that doesn’t meet their needs.

UPDATE 12/16/2005: because there is controversy about the release of the draft RFP, I’ve removed links to it and quotes from it from this post.