Uh-oh, there appears to be trouble in paradise for San Francisco and its wireless network plans.
Apparently, a Google executive has grown frustrated with the city over the pace of the project. Chris Sacca, who is in charge of the company's special projects, told the San Francisco Chronicle that city officials are moving too slowly in terms of negotiating a final contract between it and the EarthLink/Google partnership. In fact, he offered a pretty sharp criticism in stating that "Every meeting is like the first." (Ouch!)
Of course, city officials are saying that they are doing their due diligence and they are satisfied with how things are moving along. However, plans originally called for the network to be built by the end of the year, but it appears that it won't be deployed until sometime next year. (This is progress?)
The story does seem to indicate that Google is being a bit pushy regarding their negotiations with the city and that the company, which is used to having things go their own way when it comes to just about everything else, didn't anticipate the sheer bureaucracy that a big city like San Francisco has in terms of getting projects like this through the system.
While both sides can boast a legitimate argument for their positions, the losers in all of this are the citizens of San Francisco, who have been promised a citywide wireless network in a short amount of time and now must be wondering what the holdup is. Again, this is an example of how cities and vendors must manage expectations when it comes to muni WiFi networks and not to promise the moon when you haven't gotten the basics nailed down yet.
