The Silicon Valley company is deep in the throes of
a multipronged effort to fund, build and help run
wireless networks in emerging markets such as
sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, said people
familiar with the strategy. The wireless networks
would be available to dwellers outside of major
cities where wired Internet connections aren't
available and could be used to improve Internet
speeds in urban centers, these people said.

Google plans to team up with local companies in the
emerging markets to develop the networks, as well
as formulate business models to support them,
these people said. It is unclear whether Google
already has lined up such deals or alliances.
In some cases, Google plans to provide its own
recently developed wireless technologies to help
such networks, these people said.

Some of those efforts revolve around using certain
airwaves reserved for TV broadcasts to create
wireless networks, but only if government
regulators allowed it, these people said. Google has
long been involved in public trials to prove the
technology—which operates at lower frequencies
than some cell networks, allowing signals to be
more easily transmitted through buildings and
other obstacles and across longer distances—can
work. And it has begun talking to regulators in
countries such as South Africa and Kenya about
changing current rules to allow such networks to be
built en masse.

Google has also been working on building an
ecosystem of new microprocessors and low-cost
smartphones powered by its Android mobile
operating system to connect to the wireless
networks, these people said. And the Internet
search giant has worked on making special balloons
or blimps, known as high-altitude platforms, to
transmit signals to an area of hundreds of square
miles, though such a network would involve
frequencies other than the TV broadcast ones.

Google has also considered helping to create a
satellite-based network, some of these people said.
"There's not going to be one technology that will be
the silver bullet," meaning that each market will
require a unique solution, said one person familiar
with Google's plans.