A few weeks ago, Mountain View, California, Google-Fi customers started complaining about network performance and spotty coverage. The network in question consists of 380 Tropos Wi-Fi nodes placed on utility poles around the city, offering users downstream speeds up to 1Mbps (roughly) and upstream speeds ranging from 144kbps to 986kbps.

Google technicians insisted the coverage issues would be resolved as the project moved forward. "We are in the process of installing additional nodes, which will improve our coverage and reliability across the network," a Google technician noted. "We have also been visiting individual apartment complexes to discuss the possibility of installing a node on their premises."

MuniWireless penned a piece suggesting that the spotty coverage was the result of a flaw in the architecture being used. Tropos has responded, as you'd expect, defending their design decisions and hardware:

"As with any wireless networking technology, not everyone is going to have perfect coverage/throughput from day one and it’s not always going to be obvious to the end user why this is the case. Mountain View residents and visitors should be assured that we are continuing to improve coverage and connectivity for all users.

While any wireless network will have a degree of challenge, the overall degree and intensity of usage on our networks is very encouraging for our industry. Our 20% to 25% household penetration rates, growing usage and 45% to 95% of users who access our networks every day of the week are evidence that a majority of our users are pleased by the performance and reliability"

If you haven't been following along at home, Google-Fi is not going to become a national service. Google offers free Wi-Fi in Mountain View because their new headquarters is there. They're primarily interested in testing localized services and Wi-Fi ad delivery for future citywide Wi-Fi partnerships.