WiFi High -- Free Internet 'hot zones' are drawing new wave of
customers downtown

By Steven Rosenberg

It's lunchtime in downtown Salem, and Jeanne Pickering is bathed in sunlight
at the window table inside the Front Street Coffeehouse. She sips Diet Coke,
nibbles on a turkey sandwich, and focuses on the screen of her Apple iBook. During her lunch break, the website designer has logged onto the Internet, downloaded a client's Web page, and begun to redesign it.

Pickering's multitasking comes courtesy of WiFi, or wireless fidelity Internet access, which is available for free in the heart of Salem and an increasing numbers of cafes and libraries north of Boston. The service allows people to go online while outside of their home or office, and gives independent consultants
like Pickering the chance to work in the midst of other people.

''It's a little more inspiring than sitting at home all of the time, and a little more energizing to be out and about," said Pickering, who works out of her Topsfield home office and chose to eat lunch at the Salem cafe because of the WiFi connection.

Salem and Portsmouth, N.H., have joined the growing list of US cities and
towns to embrace the free service by creating publicly subsidized WiFi ''hot
spots" -- two of more than 41,000 worldwide, according to the website wifi411.com. Last month, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino announced a new
WiFi task force to create a plan to make Boston wireless. With WiFi networks
now in major cities like San Francisco and Philadelphia, proponents say, high-speed access to the Internet should be available to all, saving users hundreds
of dollars a year in fees to providers.

Michael Oh, president of Tech Superpowers in Boston, who helped design free
WiFi corridors in Salem and Boston, believes the phenomenon will continue to spread throughout downtown areas. ''I think as it develops through the next
five years you're going to see much more coverage, especially in urban areas,
and in areas that are interested in attracting businesses," said Oh.

While many restaurants and hotels still charge for the service, an increasing number of cafes, restaurants, libraries, universities, and public schools have
made free high-speed wireless Internet service a priority.

Two years ago, a group of Salem merchants created a WiFi zone across
several city blocks, installing a wireless network that provided Internet access
via radio waves to laptops, and other devices such as cellphones and PDAs,
set up with the proper gear.

Patricia Zaido, executive director of the Salem Partnership economic
development organization, said the WiFi service costs more than $4,000 a year and is subsidized by 12 businesses. ''It brings people who live downtown to the shops and to the wireless area, and hopefully they'll shop and buy things. It's
also a service that I think is very cool and edgy," said Zaido, who wants to expand the service to Pickering Wharf.

In Portsmouth, N.H., the city's Chamber of Commerce launched free WiFi in
Market Square three years ago with a keen eye on collecting and
disseminating user demographics to area businesses. While the service is
available seasonally, from the spring until the fall, usage has dramatically
jumped since 2003. That year, 280 people registered to use the service;
in 2005, 1,412 people registered and logged on more than 25,000 times. Last year's data showed that a majority of users were male, between 23 and 30
years old, held bachelor's degrees, and worked in sales and marketing, said
Ginny Griffith, with the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce. ''We give the information to the downtown business people so they can see some of the trends," Griffith said.

''Having WiFi is a no-brainer because it adds so much value to the city," said
Erik Crago, president of Port City Web, a firm that helps subsidize the WiFi
zone. Crago believes that WiFi has made it easier for people to conduct
business. The wireless connection has also made corporate meetings more
mobile, said Crago. During the warmer months of the year, it's not unusual to
see whole departments eating lunch while sitting around open laptops that are connected to the Internet, he said.

In Beverly, the Chamber of Commerce wants to build a WiFi network that
would provide free Internet access along two downtown arteries, Cabot and Rantoul streets. ''Eventually, everybody is going to want to be connected,
and I think it's going to help the merchants in ways that we may not even
know yet," said Rich Weissman, the chamber's president, who estimated that
the project would cost $20,000 to launch.

Inside the Atomic Cafe in downtown Beverly, regular customers like John Hurley say the cafe's free WiFi connection keeps them returning. Hurley, an Essex commercial photographer, spends at least two hours each weekday in the cafe checking and sending e-mail and researching cameras and photo gear. ''I enjoy the culture of the coffeehouse. You tend to run into more creative people in
this atmosphere," said Hurley, who usually orders coffee and a cookie.

A few tables away, Ethan Berry prepared an e-mail to send to students. A professor at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Berry comes to the cafe
twice a week between classes to squeeze in e-mail and research time. ''I can
get more done sometimes here than I can in my office. . . . There's some etiquette around leaving you alone when you're working at a computer here," Berry explained.

Establishing written guidelines for wireless etiquette became a necessity after John Mahoney, the Atomic Cafe's owner, began offering free WiFi two years
ago. On each table, a small red card reminds WiFi patrons not to hoard table space and to be paying customers.

Mahoney, who pays $50 a month for the WiFi service, said he decided to offer free Internet access to bring new faces into the cafe. While up to 30 people
use it every day, Mahoney's staff sometimes has to remind people of the red cards that spell out the cafe's WiFi policy. ''We've got to make sure that we're
not losing business because of people camping out for so long," said Mahoney.

With customers sitting alone, focusing on a screen, Mahoney acknowledges
that the culture of the coffee shop has been altered. ''I think it's more
impersonal. You're kind of in your own little world, on your laptop, e-mailing
people all over the world instead of interacting with people around you or
reading a local paper," he said.

Brett Rhyne, an assistant professor of communications at Salem State College, uses his college's WiFi system to check e-mail but believes the free Internet
link actually creates a heavier workload for people while cutting into their free time. ''People eagerly pull out their laptops during their coffee and lunch breaks and then go on to do more work," said Rhyne. ''Ultimately, technologies like
WiFi encourage ever more telecommuting, which may be marginally more environmentally friendly but on the whole just make it cheaper to run
businesses because it lowers overhead."

At public libraries that offer free WiFi, patrons with properly equipped laptops
can spend as long as they want on the Internet.

More than four years ago, Everett's public library began offering free WiFi with
the hope that people would bring in their laptops, freeing them to be online
and not have to wait for the library's Internet-connected computers, said the library's director, Deborah Abraham.

''It's growing more and more every day," said Abraham, who has noticed
students from Bunker Hill Community College and businessmen using their
laptops with the library's WiFi.

Bonnie Strong, director of Marblehead's Abbot Public Library, sees free WiFi as another way of serving the public. ''People just need to be connected," said Strong, who estimated that 20 people use the library's WiFi link every day.
''It's been very successful. People come in and camp in a corner and get a lot
of work done that way."

At public schools, some teachers are even using WiFi in the classroom for
fact-checking. With WiFi at Swampscott High School, social studies teacher
Paul Maguire leaves his laptop on during class in case he's asked a question he can't answer. ''I can move around the classroom with it, and sometimes a question will come up in class, and you can do a search and get a pretty
quick answer," he said.

While WiFi offers the immediacy of the Internet in any setting, one Internet security analyst cautioned users to guard against identity theft or computer hackers while using the service.

Some WiFi zones may have built-in security to prevent hackers, but Harold
Belbin of Visiting Geeks in Merrimac advises users to take security into their
own hands. Laptop users, said Belbin, should have a software-based firewall
on their laptop, along with antivirus software, and anti-adware that is
activated in real time and automatically updated.

Said Belbin, ''Personal identity theft could be huge in hot spots. You're in a
higher rate of vulnerability in a hot spot because you have this level of anonymity."


Free portals to cyberspace

Beverly: Atomic Cafe
Gloucester: Lone Gull Coffeehouse, Cape Ann Coffee
Lynn: Gulu-Gulu Cafe
Newburyport: Plum Island Coffee Roasters
Danvers, Everett, Saugus, Swampscott: Panera Bread
Portsmouth, N.H.: Market Square
Salem: Downtown sections of Essex, Washington, and Front streets;
Front Street Coffeehouse

Libraries in:
Beverly
Danvers
Everett
Hamilton-Wenham
Haverhill
Ipswich
Manchester
Marblehead
Merrimac
Newbury
Peabody
Reading
Revere
Rockport
Salisbury
Saugus
Wakefield
West Newbury