Silicon Valley Power Opens Free Outdoor Wi-Fi in Santa Clara

After a soft opening Thursday, Santa Clara's electrical utility, home for data centers serving the likes of Apple and Mozilla, now has free outdoor Wi-Fi service throughout the city, a spokesman said today.

Silicon Valley Power, the city's 117-year-old energy firm, decided to expand its wireless communication system that measures power usage to provide free wireless Internet to residents, said Larry Owens, the utility's manager of customer services.

The expansion, started quietly six days ago to make sure it worked, required a modest investment of about $1 million for 60 fiber communication points plus software and websites, Owens said.

The Wi-Fi system has nearly 600 radio access points in the city that act like wireless routers on lampposts, providing data at a speed of one megabit per second without a login to anyone outside, Owens said.

While the service—designed for outdoor use—is currently not fast enough to download videos, users can access it for general online browsing and sending email, Owens said.

"It's an open system," Owens said. "We can be at a park, at a restaurant outside, at a bus stop, even lounging in your own backyard."

The system permits people using Wi-Fi indoors "to have a similar experience outdoors," Owens said.

The utility itself needed a wireless system to keep tabs on the smart meters that report power usages of residential and business customers and smart grids that send data about power supplies, Owens said.

Silicon Valley Power could also use it down the road for monitoring power charging stations and smart appliances people use in their homes.

"The system allows us to be flexible in the future," Owens said. "Public access Wi-Fi is a small part of that."

Already the Wi-Fi service has attracted about 3,000 unique users, which is pretty good for a city of 120,000 people that covers 19 square miles, Owens said.

Santa Clara and its utility has the distinct advantage of being located near many Silicon Valley tech companies and beat other power utilities on price, which averages about 10 cents a kilowatt hour, Owens said.

One of the power firm's best revenue streams comes from the 34 data centers in the city limits that technology businesses use to store online information and tap for auxiliary power when needed.

Its customers include Xeres Ventures LLC that leases data space to Apple Corp. for its iCloud wireless storage system and Vantage that leases space for online traffic for the browser company Mozilla.

"We have one of the highest concentrations of data centers," he said. "We're seeing what is called a cloud going up in our city."

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