New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood getting free public Wi-Fi, thanks to Google

Google Inc., the world’s biggest Internet-search company, plans to offer free wireless Internet access in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, creating the largest public outdoor network in the city.

Google will discuss the project with U.S. Senator Charles Schumer and other officials at 10:30 a.m. today in Chelsea, where the Internet company has offices, according to a statement from Schumer’s office.

The Mountain View, California-based company has been working with New York to foster a technology hotbed in the city. Last year it agreed to donate office space to Cornell University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology for an engineering school while the institutions build a permanent home on Roosevelt Island.

The new network, which will deliver Internet access over Wi-Fi, is part of an effort to cultivate Silicon Alley, a concentration of startups in Manhattan. Wi-Fi will be available to thousands of New Yorkers between Gansevoort Street and 19th Street from 8th Avenue to the West Side Highway, according to the statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Frier in New York at [email protected]. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick Turner at [email protected].