San Francisco Municipal Wireless was a canceled municipal wireless network that would have provided internet access to the city of San Francisco, California.

The network was originally proposed by San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom in 2004. In late 2005, the city put out a formal request for proposals, and in April 2006 it was announced that a joint proposal by Earthlink and Google had won the bid. The San Francisco Budget Analyst completed a report that analyzes possibilities for a municipal system and critiques the proposed Google/Earthlink option. The proposal was formally scrapped by the city on 12 September 2007, citing a loss of confidence in Earthlink's financial situation.

The purpose of the proposal was to provide free, wireless Internet access throughout San Francisco that anyone with a computer and wireless access device could log into. Wireless access points would be mounted on light poles throughout the city to provide coverage.

San Francisco had little money to build out their own infrastructure and so they looked for a commercial provider to build it out. A comment and proposal process was constructed with an RFI/C, or "Request for Information and Comment" and a RFP, or a "Request for Proposal". In 2005 the RFI gave the public a forum for input on how the program could work and be constructed. In 2005 through 2006 the RFP was designed to pick a provider for the project. The RFI/C and RFP processes came about as the City of San Francisco was already talking to Earthlink and Google about the project and there was concern by the public and the Board of Supervisors that the project was on a fast-track without enough public input on the project. With the end of the RFP, the Google/Earthlink partnership was in the lead to be awarded the contract.

There were two primary components to the Earthlink/Google proposal: Earthlink would install and maintain the network and provide a higher speed (1 Mbit/s), paid connection. Google would be an anchor tenant on Earthlink's network, offering a free basic service (300 kbit/s). Earthlink's plan would have offered a two-tiered pricing scheme, with a discount for qualifying low-income residents.

The San Francisco Budget Analyst's Office has criticized the proposal, claiming that the Department of Technology and Information Services (DTIS) engaged in a biased and secretive process while crafting the proposal. DTIS's critics state that the network would provide low bandwidth, wireless-only connectivity, and that it would fail to serve its stated purpose of providing internet access to underserved communities. Studies commissioned by other San Francisco agencies show that a municipally owned, rather than privately owned option, could provide users with far superior service, at little or no cost to the end user.

Some complaints were based on the fact that alternative networks were not considered during RFP phase.

Many of the Board of Supervisors saw the proposal as the mayor's project that did not include or give a chance for input by the supervisors. These supervisors tried to slow down the process in order for public input to be made. With this effort by the supervisors and with the mayor knowing that the supervisors would be needed for final approval, the mayor's office put a non-binding proposal on the November 6, 2007 Municipal Election known as Prop J - "Universal Wi-Fi Declaration of Policy". In it, the Mayor wanted to show the Board of Supervisors that public opinion supported the project in order to push the process along. Just before the election, Earthlink killed the negotiations with the City when they could not justify the financial business model. Prop J did go on to pass in the election, but with Earthlink out of the picture, the project, as drafted in the RFI/C process, was dead.