The High Expectations on Wi-Fi Coverage

Google has begun testing his Wi-Fi cloud over Mountain View and has discovered it might need to add more Wi-Fi transmitters than originally thought to deliver the coverage and service quality it promised.

A few weeks ago, in extension to my Deficient WiFi Awareness Sign, Riad Lemhachheche provided a good insight on the high expectations of San Francisco citywide Wi-Fi coverage (95% outdoor and 90% indoor). In large scale Wi-Fi is hard to plan and highly unpredictable. As Riad puts it:

Wireless signals are much more likely to suffer interferences and this is especially true for Wi-Fi which operates in an unlicensed frequency range.

Therefore Earthlink/Google downgraded the expectations in their proposal

It is difficult in practice to achieve 90 to 100% indoor coverage with any wireless network above the second floor or for interior rooms. (p 63)

It will be interesting to see how citizens will cope with a patchy coverage. Earthlink/Google have already a “get what you pay for” type of answer for this issue:

Cellular systems are a good example, and users have already become accustomed to moving around to find a good signal for such services. (p. 63)

Relation to my thesis: Sources of spatial uncertainty are network connectivity and latency.