Google famously teamed with EarthLink on a bid to unwire the city of San Francisco in 2006. While that effort ultimately failed, the Internet search giant remains active in the muni WiFi movement in the company's headquarters of Mountain View, Calif., (population 70,000).
The company announced in 2005 its plans to deploy WiFi throughout Mountain View, and in 2007 it reported its 400-some mesh routers covered around 12 square miles and 25,000 homes and handled "over 300 gigabytes of data each day," according to the company's post at the time.
So what is the status now, post-flameout? "The network is still active, with over 500 WiFi nodes deployed in Mountain View," said Google spokesman Andrew Pederson. "The network covers approximately 12 square miles and 25,000 homes, serves close to 16,000 unique users each month and handles over 500 gigabytes of data each day, sent to over 180 distinct types of WiFi devices."
Pederson boasted the network is "one of the most heavily used open networks anywhere in the world."
However, despite the company's massive, continued investments in the wireless industry--from Android to Clearwire--it seems Google is content to rest on its apparent muni WiFi laurels. "We don't currently have any plans to expand to other cities," Pederson said.
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