The New York Times' first feature about wi-fi and the national proliferation of wireless internet access. By Adam Baer

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THE WI­FI BOOM
THE WI-FI BOOM; Out and About, and Online
By ADAM BAER
Published: December 12, 2002
ON a brisk autumn day in Portland, Ore., Paul van Veen was soaking
up some sun as he logged on to the Internet -- from a spot in bustling
Pioneer Courthouse Square. Mr. van Veen was looking for a job, and
he was surfing the Web over a free wireless connection.
These days, Pioneer Courthouse Square is but one of some 140 public
spots across Portland with free Internet access using a high-speed
wireless technology known as Wi-Fi. The network of such Wi-Fi ''hot
spots'' throughout the city was developed by Personal Telco, a grass-
roots, nonprofit group devoted to blanketing the city with free access
points.
Portland and Personal Telco are just part of a growing national trend. There are
community groups promoting public Wi-Fi access in nearly every large American city,
from NYCwireless, which ''unwired'' Bryant Park and Tompkins Square Park in
Manhattan, to KC Wireless in the Kansas City area. They have been joined by independent
cafes and restaurants, apartment houses and community centers across the country that
view free, easy access to the Internet as a draw for customers.
At the same time, subscription services and pay-as-you-go Wi-Fi hot spots are springing
up in cafes, bookstores, hotels and airports, put in by companies like T-Mobile and
smaller, start-up competitors like Boingo Wireless and Wayport. Last week, Cometa
Networks, a new company backed by Intel, AT&T and I.B.M., said it planned to put a
network of thousands of wireless access points across a huge swath of the nation by 2004.
The result is a growing array of options for Wi-Fi users and the emergence of a mobile
wireless culture that spans business travelers, teachers and students, people relaxing in
coffee shops and even moviegoers waiting for the show.
All that is needed for laptop users to wander with Wi-Fi (the name is short for ''wireless
fidelity'') is a piece of hardware called a Wi-Fi card -- perhaps a $100 investment -- and
where the access is not free, a one-time or longer-term service provider. Anecdotal
evidence suggests that most users are male, under 40 and comfortable with technology.
The technology is, however, becoming more accessible. People who use paid hot spots like
those offered by Wise Zone, Wayport and T-Mobile simply open their browsers to log on.
Users of free city networks like NYCwireless are asked to agree to the network's
''acceptable use'' policy, and if they do, they are on the Internet for six free hours until they
have to sign on again.
Wi-Fi is also changing the way that people -- at least some young, technologically adept
people -- go about their work. In Philadelphia, Yvonne Jones, a 33-year-old freelance
copywriter, moved her base of operations to a Starbucks about a month ago and said she
quickly became ''a thousand times'' more productive than she was when working at home.
''It's not your house, and you are there for a specific purpose, so the 'distractions' aren't
that distracting,'' she said.
Frank Bonomo, who is between apartments and living with his parents on Long Island
after losing his job at a dot-com, spends nearly every workday at a Starbucks in Greenwich
Village. Mr. Bonomo, 24, is building a freelance practice as a Web producer, managing
online advertising and message boards for design firms. He uses an account with T-Mobile
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to stay in touch with his clients by e-mail and instant messaging. ''I commute here from
the Island so I can be close to the offices of my three to four regular clients,'' he said.
Mr. van Veen, who is looking for work as a wireless systems engineering manager, said he
was using the public Wi-Fi hot spot in Portland to research a ''hot job lead'' because the
connection was so much faster than his home connection. ''At home, you generally use a
standard phone line,'' he said. ''This downloads at 200 kilobytes a second, which is just
lightning quick.''
Actually, under ideal conditions, Wi-Fi offers even greater speeds -- 11 megabits per
second, exceeding those typically achieved by high-speed home connections through cable
modems or digital subscriber lines. Connection speeds slow, however, as a user gets
farther from the source of the signal, which has a range of about 300 feet.
Ryan Palmer, a Portland-based consultant who studies human-computer interactions, said
public wireless access had allowed him to be more efficient and enjoy himself at the same
time. Mr. Palmer, 27, was on a business trip to Austin and wanted to sample the authentic
Texas barbecue that he kept hearing about, but he also had some work to finish. He was
able to do both at Green Mesquite BBQ, a restaurant with a recently installed free Wi-Fi
access point.
''It's nice to surf the Web and enjoy some good food,'' he said, adding that the Internet
connection at his hotel was so slow it was ''painful.'' He said: ''I feel empowered. I'm not a
stranger in a strange land anymore.''
It took Mr. Palmer 15 minutes of fiddling with the settings on his laptop to get a
connection at the restaurant. ''I had to play around a little bit,'' he said. ''I'm still not
confident that someone could walk in off the street and do it.''
Not everyone can. Jodi Avant, 41, who is studying for teacher certification at the
University of Texas at Austin, uses wireless frequently on campus, where it is widely
available. As part of her program, she had to buy an Apple iBook with a wireless card to do
schoolwork and communicate with teachers and other students.
She tried and failed to log on to the free Wi-Fi hot spot at a Schlotzsky's Deli near the
campus. ''I brought it here, set it up and played around with it for half an hour,'' she said.
But she did not know what settings she needed and there was no help available in the
restaurant.
Ms. Avant, who lives near Schlotzsky's, visits the restaurant with her children every
Saturday. They stay about an hour and use the wireless Internet terminals provided by the
restaurant. She checks her e-mail while her 7- and 11-year-old sons play games and her 8-
year-old daughter visits sites like www.funjail.com. Ms. Avant said she planned to keep
trying to get through to the Schlotzsky's network on her own computer. ''It's a lot better
than my dial-up at home,'' she said. ''The only downside is I can't print anything.''
People who use public Wi-Fi networks have another option: they can use the same setup to
connect to wireless networks at home, at the office and at school. Running a Wi-Fi
network in an office is only slightly more involved. Janine Kurnoff, who runs a Portland
company that trains sales and marketing professionals, has maintained her Wi-Fi network
for a year and a half. ''There's a little bit of setup involved, but less than an hour of work,''
she said. ''You don't have to configure anything. The computer sees your network and
picks it up.''
Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, a girls' school in Bellevue, Wash., was part of
Microsoft's Pioneer School program on incorporating technology into the curriculum in
1996. Now each student's tuition buys a Wi-Fi-ready laptop.
''There's a lot of instant messaging going on,'' said Diane Burgess, 39, the school's
information technology manager. Ms. Burgess said classes were no longer disrupted by
cellphones, parents message their children to arrange pickup times, and students regularly

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share files for collaborative projects. ''Wi-Fi lets them do group work from anywhere on
campus,'' Ms. Burgess said. ''It's a really freeing experience.''
Beyond the hardware and software difficulties that users like Ms. Avant have encountered
at public Wi-Fi spots, there are traffic considerations: connection speeds can slow if the
number of users on a network picks up. And some home Wi-Fi users have reported that
the systems, which operate on the 2.4-gigahertz frequency, are subject to interference
from cordless telephones and microwave ovens. Ms. Burgess said that water, which
absorbs the wireless signal's energy much like food in a microwave oven, can interfere with
a home network and that glasses, clothes and other clutter can obstruct the signal. ''It
actually helps me keep my home cleaner,'' she said. ''My kids keep their rooms absolutely
streamlined now.''
Security is also a concern for open networks. Mark Malewski of NexTech Wireless, a
Chicago-based nonprofit group that is trying to organize grass-roots Wi-Fi networks, said
there were steps the hot spot operators could take to help. ''We have an authentication
server that tracks usage,'' he said. ''Without that, a lot of people could plug in an access
point and share it with those who could conduct fraudulent activity.''
Security concerns will become more important as public Wi-Fi networks spread and more
people use them. Statistics on use of the technology are elusive, but according to Gartner, a
consulting company in Stamford, Conn., the number of Wi-Fi cards sold in North America
this year is on track to jump 75 percent over 2001, with another 57 percent gain over this
year expected in 2003. William Clark, research director at Gartner, said that the number
of frequent Wi-Fi users was expected to grow to 1.9 million next year from 700,000 in
2002, with the number of public hot spots in North America likely to nearly triple by the
end of next year from about 3,300 now.
In fact, this growth is responsible for casual Wi-Fi use beyond the high-tech vanguard.
Sherry Bough, 56, and her husband, Bob, 59, live at the Austin Lone Star RV Resort, a
gated park with a heated pool, a playground and a Wi-Fi network, for six months a year to
be near their children. The Boughs used to order a phone line whenever they stayed in one
place for more than a month so that they could use their dial-up Internet connection to
track their investments, check e-mail and search the Web. Now they use the park's Wi-Fi
network.
''It's amazing how fast it downloads,'' Mrs. Bough said of the network, which was installed
earlier this fall and offers fee-based service by the day, week or month. Still, she said, it
took her a couple of hours to connect the first time. ''It was a little bit confusing,'' she said.
''To me, that's where they're failing right now.'' To use the wireless network, the Boughs
had to buy a U.S.B. card for their computer and they updated to Windows 98; Mrs. Bough
said they also needed to install more memory.
James Westberry, 55, is another part-time resident at Austin Lone Star. He works in
Austin, the state capital, when the Legislature is in session, advising lobbyists for small
telephone companies like the Eastex Telephone Cooperative, where he works. He goes
home to Tyler, Tex., on the weekends.
''I have to have high-speed Internet wherever I'm at,'' he said. ''Otherwise I'd be at a hotel
or have an apartment.'' He uses it to download bills, attend committee meetings online
and to check e-mail.
Public Wi-Fi has also begun to change the way people play. Jack Swayze, a 27-year-old
technical-support worker in Vienna, Va., gathers with laptop-equipped friends at Wise
Zone hot spots around Washington to team up for live-action shooting games like Unreal
Tournament 2003 and Medal of Honor, which they play against other Web ''posses.'' ''The
connection is as reliable and fast as my connection at home,'' he said.
At the Alamo Drafthouse North, a movie theater in Austin, wireless access is available in
the four screening halls. Tim League, the theater's 32-year-old owner, installed the Wi-Fi
access in concert with Austin Wireless, which set up the system after he agreed to offer it

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to viewers free.
Mr. League uses the network to offer Internet-based activities to entertain viewers before
movies. He is testing interactive trivia programs and audience polling contests and expects
to have one running soon. ''I've always thought it strange that the slides you see before
movies still exist,'' he said. ''That the practice hadn't changed in 30 years just seemed
silly.'' He shows animated videos that are downloaded from the Web using a Wi-Fi-
equipped computer in his projection room. ''Viewers also use the Web to research movie
facts or catch up on their work or e-mail, though we ask them to close their laptops when
the show begins,'' he said.
Entertainment is the main motivation behind Shane Nixon's experiments with public Wi-
Fi. Mr. Nixon, 34, was trying to log on to a Wayport hot spot at the Austin airport last week
while he waited for a flight to Bowling Green, Ky., where he lives.
A construction and maintenance coordinator who travels three weeks a month, Mr. Nixon
had been using dial-up connections while on the road to chat with his wife by instant
messaging and to play card games with her on sites like www.mysticisland.net. He had just
installed a wireless network at home so that he, his wife and two sons could go online at
once, and he was trying to connect wirelessly on the road for the first time. When he could
not log on, he used his cellphone to call Wayport's technical-support number, but his
cellphone battery died. Despite the technical problems he encountered, Mr. Nixon said he
would probably stick with Wi-Fi. ''I'm gone all the time, so that's a way to keep in touch
and do something together,'' he said.
Mr. Nixon noted another virtue of high-speed chatting. ''You can talk all night long,'' he
said, ''and you don't have a large phone bill.''
Where to Roam
Finding Hot Spots and Service Providers
Once you are equipped with a laptop or palmtop with a Wi-Fi card, you are ready to roam.
Several Web sites can guide you to Wi-Fi access points, or hot spots; other sites provide
information about subscription-based access.
References
www.nodedb.com -- Locations of free access points worldwide, as well as those in
development.
www.80211hotspots.com -- Searchable database of sites in the United States, Puerto Rico
and 10 other countries.
Providers
www.tmobilebroadband.com -- T-Mobile's hot spot locations nationwide, including many
Starbucks locations, services and support.
www.boingo.com -- Hundreds of locations in more than 40 states and four other
countries.
www.surfandsip.com -- Locations throughout the United States.
www.wayport.com -- Locations in 10 airports and hundreds of hotels.
www.wifimetro.com -- More than 60 locations in six states.
www.hereuare.com -- Hundreds of locations nationwide and in Canada.
www.guest-tek.com -- Locations for business travelers in hotels in 18 states and overseas.
Photos: HOT SPOTS -- Paul van Veen used a free wireless connection in Portland, Ore.,
recently to pursue a job lead on the Web. In Bellevue, Wash., students at the Forest Ridge

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School of the Sacred Heart used a wireless connection to work online. Wi-Fi ''hot spots''
are spreading. (Shane Young for The New York Times, top; Peter Yates for The New York
Times, above)(pg. G1); PARK VIEW -- James Westberry, an adviser to lobbyists, has
wireless Internet access at the Austin Lone Star RV Resort in Austin, Tex. (Mark Matson
for The New York Times)(pg. G4)
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