The New York Times

June 5, 2003

Roving the Globe, Laptops Alight on Wireless Hot Spots
By DOUGLAS HEINGARTNER

AMSTERDAM -- INSIDE the Waag, a former customs house and gallows that
towers over the Nieuwmarkt here, the price of cappuccino continues to
rise. Yet the
wireless Internet access in the surrounding square is perfectly free.

As this public-access project and countless others demonstrate, the
phenomenon known as Wi-Fi has not gone unnoticed beyond the United
States. So travelers
heading abroad this summer with a Wi-Fi-equipped laptop will be able to
log on at high speed, sometimes free, in places ranging from Amsterdam
to Mount
Everest to the Dead Sea.

With Internet access becoming a necessity for many travelers, typing
e-mail on a stained keyboard in a local cybercafe has lost its charm.

"Sometimes you want more than access," said Scott Rafer, who runs
www.wifinder.com,
which lists hot spots, or points of public access to Wi-Fi, around the
world. "Sometimes you want access with your computer."

And unlike the solitary process of rearranging hotel-room furniture in
search of a feeble dial-up connection, using Wi-Fi brings with it a
social dividend.
"It's relatively new in the Netherlands," said Boris Veldhuijzen van
Zanten, founder of a Dutch wireless network called HubHop (
www.hubhop.com
). "
People aren't really used to seeing people work on their laptops in
bars, so they come up and say: 'Wow, how does that work? Wireless
Internet?' It's a
great way to meet people."

While Wi-Fi coverage has become commonplace at airports and major hotel
chains, availability elsewhere may be in the form of pilot projects and
prone to
failures.

In several Asian countries, telephone companies were quick to see
Wi-Fi's potential and establish networks of hot spots requiring a
subscription, just as
T-Mobile has done in the United States at
Starbucks
and Borders, and plans to do at Kinko's locations this fall.

Elsewhere, however, the consumer is often left to make sense of a
confusing smorgasbord of providers. Even in Britain and Germany, where
T-Mobile now has
dozens of hot spots, an American T-Mobile account is not valid. On the
other hand, Boingo (
www.boingo.com)
does make its several hundred international hot spots available to its
United States subscribers.

If you plan to stay in one area for most of your travels, you might be
better off signing up with a local provider. Telia HomeRun of Sweden (
www.homerun.telia.com),
for example, has Scandinavia more or less covered, plus a dozen or so
international airports in North America, Asia and elsewhere. It shares a
roaming agreement
with Openzone (
www.bt.com/openzone),
the Wi-Fi service of BT, the British telecommunications company,
although using it costs extra.

For its part, Openzone recently launched the Cloud, which will provide
thousands of British pubs with Wi-Fi access.

Swisscom
Eurospot, the other major provider (
www.swisscom.com/eurospot)
in Europe, is offering about 800 hot spots throughout the Continent.

Pricing plans vary. John Patrick, the retired vice president for
Internet technology at
I.B.M.
and a veteran wireless Internet user on the road, said that when he
stayed at a hotel that charged $20 for Wi-Fi service, "I used dial-up."

At Heathrow Airport in London, BT charges about $10 for an hour's
access, whereas HubHop charges about $17 for a week of nationwide
coverage. "Wi-Fi doesn't
have to be free," Mr. Patrick said, "but the pricing has to make sense."

With most providers, you pay through an on-screen credit card process
that is initiated when your computer detects a network. Often you can
choose from
among several competing providers.

Of course, users' needs vary. Mr. Veldhuijzen of HubHop recognizes that
corporate travelers are willing to pay - and often pay a premium - for
reliable,
convenient service. "If I have a business meeting in the park and it's
raining, I don't say, 'Follow me into the bushes, I want to show you
something,'
" he said. "But the paid hot spot inside the cafe is warm and dry."

Sean O'Sullivan, a documentary filmmaker based in Los Angeles, brings
his Wi-Fi-equipped laptop to many of the industry festivals and
conferences he attends.
These days they all offer wired Internet access, "but there's always a
line to get on a machine," he said. "With Wi-Fi, you never have to
wait."

Mr. O'Sullivan also uses Wi-Fi to send digital images quickly. This task
will soon become easier: Sanyo recently showed off a prototype Wi-Fi
camera that
lets users transmit snapshots directly to the Web.

Mr. Rafer of WiFinder cautioned that attendants may be undertrained,
even when you are paying for a commercial network. If you have an
important document
to send and the network stops working, "the guy behind the counter won't
know how to fix it," he said. Language barriers may make matters worse.

Familiar brand names can offer some consolation. All
McDonald's
restaurants in Australia are now equipped with Wi-Fi, for example, as
are several hundred in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Thailand. Certain
meal combinations
come with an hour of free access. And many Apple computer stores
throughout Europe beam free Wi-Fi to the surrounding neighborhood, as
they do in the United
States.

If being offline for even a few hours is more than you can bear, you can
now surf while flying. Lufthansa and
British Airways
recently introduced trans-Atlantic Wi-Fi with
Boeing's
Connexion service; Japan Airlines and Scandinavian Airlines System will
offer the service soon.

Wi-Fi is also taking to the rails. A recent test project by Copenhagen
and Goteborg in Sweden is to resume next month, followed by a
Stockholm-Oslo route
in the fall. The Gare du Nord station in Paris was recently equipped
with Wi-Fi, and free access along a central Parisian bus route will be
available until
June 30 (users must sign up at
www.wixos.net).
The German rail system, the Bundesbahn, recently announced similar plans
for access.

Over all, the proliferation of Wi-Fi in public places, homes and
workplaces - including those that unwittingly broadcast their signal to
the world - means
that your summer travels may well include a free ticket to the wireless
Web.

Copyright 2003
The New York Times Company |


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