Google Inc. wrote grandly of the importance of Wi-Fi in a proposal for free wireless in San Francisco that was made public on the Web Monday, but the search company downplayed its own potential role in delivering Internet service.
The proposal, one of 26 responses from interested companies to the city's request for information and comment on the idea of a citywide wireless Internet service, calls for Google to offer free Wi-Fi service to all residents and visitors. Advertisements targeted to users' locations would help support the project, in which other Internet service providers could also buy access wholesale and sell special services to end users, Google said.
"We believe that ubiquitous, affordable Internet access is a crucial aspect of humanity’s social and economic development, and that working to supply free Wi-Fi is a major step in that direction," Google's response said. "However, we also believe that there will never be either one form of online connectivity or one company that exclusively provides it."
Some recent news reports have raised the specter of Google muscling in on existing broadband providers through widespread free wireless Internet access, using optical fiber capacity to create a national backbone network. In the document posted Monday, Google referred to the fiber network, but in a more limited context.
"It takes thousands of computers and miles of fiber optic cable to globally deliver responses to your search queries within fractions of a second," Google wrote in the proposal. "We are confident that we can replicate the success of this infrastructure in the world of Wi-Fi for the city of San Francisco."
San Francisco could be a test bed for location-based applications and services delivered over Wi-Fi, the company wrote. In fact, Google already is working with partners to provide free Wi-Fi in some parts of the city, and it offers access in a few locations near its Mountain View, California, headquarters.
Feeva Inc., a software company in San Francisco that submitted its own response to the city's request, said it joined with Google and the city in March to create two free municipal wireless networks. Feeva's software can identify the location of a user on a wireless network, the device being used for access, and preferences provided by the user, according to its submission. By providing that data to advertisers -- while preserving the user's anonymity -- the service provider can generate enough revenue to cover the cost of the network, according to Feeva.
Google proposed to build an IEEE 802.11b/g Wi-Fi mesh network that delivers more than 1M bps (bits per second) of capacity throughout the city. Anyone in the city could get access free at speeds as high as 300K bps, and Google or third parties could sell access at higher speeds, possibly as high as 3M bps. The 300K bps free service could be reached at street level, in the front room of a home or business, and on the first few floors of a building. Consumers might be encouraged to use customer premises equipment for better indoor reception, Google said. The city would give Google access to about 1,900 lamp posts for placing access points, which would also be located on some buildings.
Google would also provide a separate VLAN (virtual LAN) for municipal agencies' own traffic to help ensure delivery and mitigate congestion. The city could use it free at 300K bps.
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