Google has been installing the radios and equipment necessary for nearly two weeks. to provide its home base of Mountain View with wireless broadband access.
No one from Google will comment directly on a report in Unstrung that deployment has been happening, but a source for the publication claimed Google has started putting in radios.
Google embarked on a plan to unwire Mountain View in November. They would pay the city $12,600 annually as rent for its placement of radios on utility poles, plus another three or four thousand dollars a year for utility costs.
Before the Mountain View proposal, Google stepped up to San Francisco’s request for proposals to provide unwired broadband by submitting a proposal at nearly the last minute. Unlike competitive proposals delivered to San Francisco, Google’s plan would be free for the city, plus Google would pay the city as it is planning to do for Mountain View.
Despite all the speculation and wishful thinking, Google has not backed away from claims that it does not want to be a wireless provider to the world outside of the Bay Area.
Google stands to make money from its wireless initiatives by driving more traffic to its site. As the Unstrung report noted, advertising innovations by Google that let it more finely target users with advertisements with its “location-aware ad delivery system” and via a partnership with a startup company, Feeva, could be the real tests of Google’s Wi-Fi plans, by letting the search advertising company justify its ad rates to buyers.
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David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
