San Francisco voters will be able to vote in November for free citywide Wi-Fi, a concept that the city has been working toward for three years but that may be dead in the water by the time of the election.

The vote will have no legal effect and won't address the particular deal the combined city and county government has worked out with EarthLink. But the initiative, placed on the ballot late Friday by Mayor Gavin Newsom and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, does try to address some criticisms of the EarthLink deal.

Under the contract negotiated by the city and EarthLink, the Atlanta ISP would build a network at no cost to the city and lease access to light poles and other facilities for mounting of access points. EarthLink would sell a residential service for about $20 per month and Google would offer a free service over the same network, probably supported by advertising.

But the plan has run into stiff opposition from activists and some members of the Board of Supervisors. They have attacked what they see as a bad deal that ties the city's hands, a lack of user privacy, too little effort to bring poor residents onto the Internet, and no guarantee the system will actually reach everyone.

And since negotiations were finished in January and the issue headed toward a Board of Supervisors vote, EarthLink has twice raised alarms about its nationwide municipal Wi-Fi network business. Most recently, late last month the company said it would delay any new buildouts until it knows it can get an acceptable return on them. For its future networks -- which may or may not refer to the agreed San Francisco deal -- EarthLink said it will ask cities to buy services themselves. San Francisco isn't ready to do that, according to Peskin.

The "declaration of policy" that will go before the voters in November calls for a Wi-Fi network that will reach all parts of the city equally and provide free Internet access for all residents, businesses, institutions and visitors. Whoever the city contracts with for the network should prevent unauthorized sharing of personal data and unnecessarily keeping information about users' locations, the initiative says.

It recommends that the city "initially" provide the network through a public-private partnership that minimizes financial risk to the city. The contract should set a reasonable term to avoid a franchise arrangement, the initiative says. In debate on the EarthLink deal, some supervisors have voiced alarm over the prospect of another franchise like the one the city has with cable provider Comcast Corp., which they said is hard for the city to break. Peskin has proposed amendments to the EarthLink deal that would let the city buy back the network after eight years.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.