The entire city of San Francisco will be wireless by early 2007, if things go as planned. Google and EarthLink, along with Tropos Networks and Motorola, will help build the infrastructure for a city-wide WiFi network.

According to an article from The New York Times…

The San Francisco service will be EarthLink's fourth municipal wireless network. The plan is to blanket the city so that all residents can connect to the Internet from their homes and offices and even from neighborhood parks." Users of the free wireless service will be able to connect to the Internet at a speed that is faster than dialup, but slower than cable service.

So, what's in this for Google and EarthLink?

The trade-off is that [wireless internet users] will see a variety of on-screen advertising, though exactly what that will look like is part of the negotiations. Or, for an estimated $20 a month, subscribers will be able to connect through EarthLink at roughly four times that speed and see no advertising at all."

More from The New York Times on San Francisco's citywide wireless network.

Now that Google and Earthlink have won the bidding process in San Francisco, they've decided to repeat the process in a second yet-to-be-determined city. More from the Dow Jones Newswires…

NEW YORK—EarthLink and Google, which were selected Wednesday by San Francisco to provide hybrid free and paid WiFi Internet services, plan to bid for a second U.S. city together under a proposal that would offer more limited free services.

The two companies have not yet determined which city they will target. But they said they intend to propose building a network that would mainly be sustained by paid subscriptions sold by EarthLink, one of the nation's largest Internet service providers. They would, however, offer all city residents and visitors free access to Google's ad-supported local search service and to area websites."

I hope Google and EarthLink select a city on the East Coast, New York perhaps, or maybe Austin, Texas. I'd gladly pay $20 a month for broadband internet access from EarthLink. That's cheap compared to Time Warner's $44.95/month RoadRunner service.