Google blankets Mountain View with free Wi-Fi network

Google blankets Mountain View with free Wi-Fi network

MOUNTAIN VIEW - Google Inc has blanketed its hometown of Mountain View, California with free Wi-Fi network that provides broadband access to all residents, businesses and even visitors to the place. Any user who has a Wi-Fi enabled laptop or a PDA can connect to the GoogleWiFi network and sign up for a free account.

“Google launched a Wi-Fi network in our hometown of Mountain View. Radios hanging on lampposts throughout the city are now broadcasting a "GoogleWiFi" wireless (802.11b/g) signal that brings wireless Internet access to the city's residents, businesses, and visitors,” a posting on Google's official blog confirmed. Google said that it was also looking to promote Wi-Fi as a means of Internet access through this project.

"It worked smashingly," said Chris Sacca, Google head of special initiatives. "We have really been looking forward to this day. The citizens have embraced it as their network." Google spent around $1 million to lay down the network and fixed antenna atop lampposts and on homes of citizens who offered it for use in the so-called "dead zones."

Sacca said the cost of operating the network was cheap for Google and that the network underlined Google's belief in universal access to the Internet. "One of the main goals of the project was to inspire citizens to realize there is this promise of access and at the same time to inspire entrepreneurs to develop networks," Sacca said. "What better way to go ahead and put your money where your mouth is than to build a network and show that it works."

He added that the access would depend on how close citizens were to a node, "Wi-Fi signals are irregular and hard to predict, so coverage varies depending where you are, how close the node happens to be and what your house is made of."