After a six-week review of proposals, the five-member TechConnect Committee planning the future of city-wide wireless for the city of San Francisco last night picked the partnership of Earthlink and Google as their top choice of system integrator to install and manage the network.

While they are the top pick, this is not yet a signed deal. There's a possibility of issues yet to be hammered out though Bill Tolpegin, vice president of development and planning in Earthlink's municipal networks unit says the proposal they gave was "pretty comprehensive solution... but now we can answer exact questions" from the committee and city council.

In a statement issued last night, Earthlink's president of the municipal networks unit, Donald Berryman, said, "We look forward to taking the next step to negotiate a contract to build a municipal wireless broadband network...[and] to getting started in building a solution that will bring the incredible possibilities to reality."

If the city can't come to terms with Earthlink, the city Department of Telecommunications and Information Services (DTIS) can terminate the negotiations and move on to the next highest ranked proposer. That would be MetroFi next, followed by the SF Metro Connect consortium in third place.

The network proposed by Earthlink will be built in partnership with Google, using equipment from Motorola for backhaul and Tropos Networks for mesh/client connections. Motorola also provides the personnel to install all the hardware. Cost of deployment is expected to reach between $8 and $10 million. Tax payers would contribute nothing —it's all out of Google/Earthlink's pocket.

Full article: internetnews.com