PTP and SWN in the Christian Science Monitor

http://www.csmonitor.com/
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0615/p01s03-ussc.html

Techno-rebels spread wireless vision
A grass roots free access movement has drawn ire from telecoms.


Techno-rebels spread wireless network vision
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore | Correspondent of The Christian Science
Monitor
PORTLAND, ORE. – On the surface, it looks like an ordinary weeknight
gathering of aimless guys. A dozen men on a back porch chew thick slices
of delivered pizza between rat-a-tat banter. One wears a bandanna. Another
sports a John Deere T-shirt. Several have counterculture beards.

But beneath the raffish exterior lie some high-watt minds. The talk is
about bandwidths and binary codes.

Meet the geeks, a selective handful of Portland's brightest computer
science gurus who gather weekly at Node 236 - aka Tom Higgins's house - to
discuss all things wireless. They are modern-day freedom fighters trying
to encourage people to host wireless connections to the Internet, with the
hope of eventually unplugging the entire city.

The idea: If enough people share bandwdith and a spot on their window
ledge for a small radio antenna, eventually anyone in the city will be
able to go online free. It's a new form of civic activism - driven by
computer programmers who want to pool their collective knowledge for the
greater good.

"It's not necessarily about giving [Internet access] away for free," says
Aaron Baer, the treasurer for Personal Telco. "It's more about trying to
build a community, and allowing the local community to build
infrastructure for communication."

Wireless fidelity (wi-fi), whether free or not, is a movement that's
catching on across the country, but particularly in the Northwest.
Seattle, San Francisco, and Portland, Ore., are among the four most
"unwired" cities in the country (Austin, Texas, ranks third), according to
a recent Intel survey.

Others are well on their way to adopting similar free access alternatives,
sometimes with city funding. San Jose, Calif., and Alexandria, Va., for
instance, have recently launched small-scale projects that offer up three
or four free 'hot spots' (an access point where people can log onto the
Internet wirelessly). Philadelphia and Minneapolis have plans to go
completely wireless.

Seattle considered blanketing its center with free access, but local
residents and businesses already paying for the services have created a de
facto patchwork of access points, rendering a formal push for wireless
almost moot. Ditto for San Francisco and Portland.

Despite the good intentions, opening wide the gates to high-speed Internet
connections at little or no cost to users is drawing complaints from
business owners and telecommunication companies who do charge for their
service. But these are still the cowboy days of wireless fidelity with few
rules and regulations, giving volunteer groups like Portland's Personal
Telco and Seattle Wireless ample opportunity to continue building their
home-grown empires.

"We're not just building hot spots, we're building a network across
Portland," says Mr. Higgins. "If the Internet ever fell away, this network
would still be up."

Becoming your own 'hot spot'

With help from Personal Telco, community members and businesses can become
wireless hot spots, or a "node," for a typical fee of $50 to $100 a month.
Small radio towers are installed on the owner's property that allow anyone
with a receiver within a 300-foot radius to log on to the Internet free of
charge. At the moment, the group says it has more than 100 active nodes
throughout the city.

"The thought is that as we build a community we can say, 'Hey, can we get
on your roof and put an antenna up there?' " says Mr. Baer, who is
involved with a grant to set up subsidized access points in Portland's
less-privileged neighborhoods.

But the free wi-fi movement doesn't always find warm reception. While some
see getting everyone online as a community-building venture, others think
too much wi-fi could actually have the opposite effect.

Victrola Coffee & Arts cofounder Jen Strongin, one of the first in Seattle
to offer free wi-fi a few years ago, has chosen to cut back on the service
on weekends, bemoaning a total lack of interaction between cafe goers. On
the weekends, she says, most tables are filled with people who camp out
with laptops up to eight hours a day without talking to anyone.

Service providers such as Verizon aren't that keen on the idea of sharing
access points either. They'd rather have everyone on Tom Higgins's block
pay for their own access instead of hitching a ride on his.

'It's like water'

As the concept of free wi-fi spreads, however, fee-based providers are
facing the reality that blanket service through a smaller number of nodes
may be the future.

"It's like water," says Frank Hanzlik, managing director of WiFi Alliance
in Austin, Texas. "Sometimes you drink from the drinking fountain and it's
free, sometimes you'd rather pay $3 for a bottle of water."

Starbucks, for instance, charges its customers around $9 a day for its
T-Mobile wireless access, but it advertises superior security and reliable
service. Because free services can be spottier and less secure, Mr.
Hanzlik thinks that demand for fee-based services won't disappear anytime
soon.
Top 10 'unwired' US cities

The following cities have been identified as having the most spots where
people can connect to the Internet without wires. The 'hot spot' locations
range from cafes and hotels to skate parks and gas stations.

1. Seattle-Bellevue-Everett- Tacoma, Wash.

2. San Francisco-San Jose-Oakland, Calif.

3. Austin-San Marcos, Texas

4. Portland, Ore. - Vancouver, Wash.

5. Toledo, Ohio

6. Atlanta, Ga.

7. Denver, Colo.

8. Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C.

9. Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.

10. Orange County, Calif.

Source: Intel Corp.

But for now, the thrill of seeking out and sharing free wi-fi appeals to
the renegade spirit that pulses through most technophiles. In fact,
exploring other people's access points has become known as "wardriving"
and leaving a trail of graffiti to mark those points as "warchalking."

In some cities, hot spots can be found in the most unexpected places -
bowling alleys, retirement centers, golf resorts, and retro arcades. But
in the Northwest, coverage is so widespread that it can be hard to not
stumble into access.

Casey Halverson, a wireless network engineer in Seattle, has taken the
possibility of wireless coverage one step further. In order to
"telecommute" during his train ride from Tacoma, he created a mobile
access point on his laptop, using a small, embedded Linux computer with a
cellular and wi-fi card. He pays Sprint $80 a month for the service.

One day he decided to share his connection, to see if anyone else might
try to access it from the train. To his surprise, six users logged on
within a matter of minutes. Mr. Halverson decided to turn it into a
full-blown service, offering a splash screen, which announces it is OK to
use his access, and then a news portal with local weather and 911 feeds.

"I'm a hacker, but I'm not mischievous," says the Wireless Seattle member.
"Everything we're doing is 100 percent legal. Because we're doing things
that are so cutting edge and new, people are suspicious, but we're just
trying to bend what's possible with technology."

Halverson says he's no hero: "We're not entirely crazy, spending all this
money just to let other people ride on our Internet service. A lot of
people are just saying, 'I have the technical skills to do this, and I can
afford the hardware, so what can I do with this?' Frankly, if I was the
only person using it it wouldn't be any fun."

Darrin Eden, president of Personal Telco, agrees that part of the allure
of his group is a mere byproduct - social interaction. "One of the neatest
things for me is that it really brings together a lot of hyper-intelligent
people who have a lot of creative ideas they want to get out there and
try," he says. "It just attracts a really interesting group of people who
are really curious and want to advance the cause as quickly as possible."

In a world where "interconnectedness" says more about local area
connections than weekly pizza nights, even the movement's most eager
promoters want to meet beyond the reaches of their keyboards.

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