If a new startup is successful, then it will be able to do what companies the size of Google have not. They will bring free WiFi to San Francisco. Meraki Networks is hoping to cover the city with free access by giving away WiFi repeaters to people who live in strategic locations. The idea is to get enough repeaters spread out to cover all of SF. The repeaters funnel Internet traffic back to a couple of hardware lines, sort of like a big game of “telephone”.

Unlike Google and Earthlink who were going at the problem alone by installing both the hardware and the connection, Meraki wants the community to help out by installing hardware on their own home. If it works, this may show that the masses can truly work more efficiently than a single large company. Meraki claims that it will make a profit not by selling advertisements on the network, but by proving the technology works in SF and then selling it cheaply to developing nations.

I was reminded of this upon reading the MobileCrunch article on Friday, but I first heard of Meraki a couple months ago when an AP colleague pointed me towards the service when we were upgrading our office DSL. I signed up to get a repeater but we aren’t located in a spot that Meraki wants help with… yet.