Google blankets city with free Wi-Fi

The City Council in Mountain View, Calif., unanimously approved on Tuesday a plan for Google to provide free wireless Internet access for the approximately 70,000 residents in the Silicon Valley town, Google said.

The search giant is still waiting to hear back on a similar proposal it made to the city of San Francisco. A Google spokesman said he did not know when the service would be ready for use. The company is focusing its Wi-Fi efforts on the Bay Area, he said. Last month, EarthLink won a contract to provide wireless Internet access to Philadelphia residents for an expected fee of about $20 a month.

[jrrussell]

Economics

One question that strikes my mind is how much will it cost Google to provide this service? Obviously it is no small feat to accomplish in itself. I suppose Google can afford to do this, maybe I'm wrong and it's cheaper to do it than I think. It'll be interesting to see where it goes in the future.

[peddler_deluxe]

Mountain View WiFi

This reminds me of the cellular license auctions the federal govt had back in the 90's. Companies (real and Sur-real) bid up the price of the newly released wireless spectrum for Cell phones. Then, when it was time to actually PAY the govt for the spectrum, many defaulted and couldn't "close the deal".
It seems that there are any number of cities pounding their chests w.r.t. "WiFi for the masses" - Philadelphia, San Francisco, Lompoc, Anaheim, San Jose (to some extent), OK City, Tempe, .... I don't know of one of them that has actually turned it on for any type of daily use.
WiFi is easy & cheap; It will proliferate eventually, but not via municipalities. It will take REAL network engineers and systems integrators and financial MODELS to make these work.
Until they do, I'll keep my $29.95 T-mobil account, and use Starbucks as my "road warrior" home away from home.