San Francisco may be on its way to providing its entire city with free Wi-Fi, until then, three miles of a busy downtown street will have to do.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the city unveiled its public Wi-Fi network Monday on a three-mile stretch on Market Street, from Castro to Embarcadero. The street is a transit hot spot and sees approximately 250,000 people every day.

"A quarter of a million people traverse Market Street every day, from all walks of life," Mayor Ed Lee told the SFC. "Now they can access information, find out when their next bus is coming, or peruse local job listings, all for free. This is a significant first step in my vision of connectivity for our city."

In 2007, Gavin Newsome, mayor at the time, proposed Internet coverage for the whole city. While that has not come to pass yet, the city seems like it is on its way toward that goal. In July, San Francisco announced a deal to provide Wi-Fi for public parks, some five years after Newsome's citywide proposal fell apart.

Due to disagreements with the mayor's office and the Board of Supervisors over a city contract with EarthLink and Google, citywide Internet connectivity was never achieved. This new Market Street network, however, will be constructed and owned by the city to avoid such quarrels.

Ruckus Wireless, of Sunnyvale, donated hardware and Layer42 Networks, of Mountain View, contributed 1 gigabit of Internet data to the project. After those donations, the city spent $500,000 completing the project.

"It was simpler, faster, better to do it on our own," said Marc Touitou, Lee's appointed city chief information officer. "The quality is higher, with the technical design by the Department of Technology. We wanted high capacity... We wanted it to be cool - no strings attached, no ads."