Google Wi-Fi gift has a catch

Google is about to give its hometown a wonderful gift: a municipal wireless network covering the entire city of Mountain View, Calif., with free Internet access for residents and visitors.

I checked out the network, now getting fine-tuned ahead of its imminent public launch, and I'm delighted to report it works better than advertised.

Not that I'm above looking a gift horse in the mouth. Google's grand gesture is incomplete in one crucial way — the company will not provide live human tech support, which is often crucial for first-time users.

Google said last year it would build the network out of its own pocket, giving only vague explanations. As a way of learning about muni wireless systems, the company sometimes says, or as a perk for its roughly 1,000 employees who live in Mountain View.

My guess is that Google, young and immensely profitable, simply has more money than sense. Whatever the motivation, Google has pledged it would install the network — at a cost of at least several million dollars — and operate it for five years.

Google Wi-Fi, as the network is known, uses the same wireless networking standard built into most notebook computers. Instead of the wireless Wi-Fi routers common in homes, Google has installed 380 "nodes," boxes with distinctive twin antennas, on light poles scattered throughout Mountain View.

Google is promising a public debut for Google Wi-Fi by the end of summer, which gives the company until Sept. 23. Details are online (wifi.google.com), along with a map showing node locations.

Google says the network will run at 1 megabit per second. That's slower than home DSL or cable Internet access, which run at 1.5 to 6 megabits per second, but it's more than adequate for most online activity.

In my tests last week, Google Wi-Fi consistently performed just under the 1 megabit mark. But, as with any shared network, that speed could drop in the future if too many users crowd online at the same time.

Wi-Fi's biggest limitation is that its signals aren't good at going through walls. So users inside homes, schools and offices can't always connect to Wi-Fi nodes on the street.

Muni wireless proponents frequently skip over this problem. But Google, which has no financial incentive to oversell its network, is refreshingly candid.

"Google Wi-Fi is primarily an outdoor network," the company said in a flier distributed at a Mountain View community meeting last month. "It is unlikely that a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop, or computer with a conventional Wi-Fi card, will work indoors in most locations."

For buildings within 500 feet of a Google node, a signal-booster device — which Google calls a Wi-Fi modem — might be able to make a connection indoors. The Google Wi-Fi site includes information on buying and configuring two models, priced at $130 and $170, recommended by the company.

I visited the homes of four friends who live in Mountain View last week, toting my Wi-Fi-enabled notebook, and managed to make a connection in two of the homes without a Wi-Fi modem. The other two homes are close enough to a node that a Wi-Fi modem should pull in the signal.

I also got a strong connection at the one place in town Google has wired for indoor service: the Mountain View Public Library.

My unscientific conclusion is that most homes or other buildings within 100 feet of a Google node should get indoor coverage without extra hardware. Buildings within 300 to 500 feet should be able to get indoor coverage with a Wi-Fi modem.

Now, for the bad news.

Google is offering online instructions and discussion forums for its Mountain View network, but there's no way to communicate by phone or instant message with a live human being.

The company is also running a series of community meetings, where potential users can ask questions, and has provided some limited training to Mountain View librarians.

None of this substitutes for being able to pick up the phone and get specific answers to specific problems.

Imagine if America Online, AT&T and Comcast announced they were eliminating phone support. We'd all rise up in revolt.

Google, or some community group, needs to organize volunteers to staff phone lines for at least a few hours a week.

Otherwise, a minority of justifiably frustrated nonusers could give Google Wi-Fi a big black eye, even as a bigger group of happy users enjoy free Wi-Fi throughout Mountain View.