Joshua Sabatini

San Francisco’s effort to create a citywide broadband internet service for all residents and businesses has suffered a setback as outgoing Mayor Mark Farrell will not place a tax measure on the November ballot to fund the project before he leaves office in the coming weeks. Mayor Farrell, who is expected to leave office mid-July, has been leading the citywide fiber internet project, which had the support of the late Mayor Ed Lee, for several years. Most recently San Francisco had selected three teams of companies who could potentially build and operate it.

San Francisco’s (CA) access to high-speed fiber optic internet service may increase under a proposal to — for the first time — begin permitting the installation of fiber wiring using more cost-effective micro-trenching. Supervisor Mark Farrell, who is also leading an effort for a citywide broadband network, introduced legislation that would for the first time have Department of Public Works grant micro-trenching city permits beginning Jan. 2, 2018. Such permits would allow internet service providers to install at a much lesser cost infrastructure to grow their customer base.

“It is difficult for many small service providers to enter the market and compete to deliver service,” Farrell said. “We have great small internet service providers that are fighting for a piece of the pie in our city to deliver services to our residents but they are denied because of cost and other prohibitions.” The Department of Public Works would “issue permits to excavate that allow the permittee to use micro-trenching to install a fiber-optic cable in the sidewalk portion of the public right-of-way, subject to any orders, regulations, or standard plans and specifications the Department may adopt.”