Widening the world of free Wi-Fi

Eduardo Sidoine stared intently at his computer monitor. A 360-degree view of landscaped grounds fanned out around him.

But Sidoine couldn't get past the one thing his workspace lacked: climate control.

"It's May and I'm freezing," he said recently as a cool breeze swept past.

Sidoine wasn't in some luxury office park. He was in Marymoor Park near Redmond, tapped into the largest swath of free public wireless Internet in the state (thanks, Microsoft!).

The networking will be free and easy this summer, and we're not talking coffee shops. Free public Wi-Fi zones are fast becoming the latest must-have amenity for cities.

On the bus or train, at the park or pool, Wi-Fi is floating in the atmosphere like the fluff from a cottonwood tree.

Information

To learn more about Metro buses with Wi-Fi: www.metrokc.gov/kcdot/news/2007/nr070405_wifi.htm

What's not yet clear is whether it will pay off, and how long it will last.

Municipal Wi-Fi projects work like those in coffee shops, using technology similar to two-way radios to transmit data to laptops.

Last month, the city of Bellevue turned 1.5 acres of its downtown into a wireless hot zone. More than a year ago, Kirkland created a Wi-Fi zone that transformed popular Lake Street into a surf-by-the-Lake street.

By offering four free hours a day of Internet access via Wi-Fi, the city of Kent made a workstation out of Kent Station.

And Seattle continues to operate two public Wi-Fi zones that it created two years ago, in Columbia City and the University District, as well as offering free Wi-Fi in four downtown parks.

Even Metro Transit offers free Wi-Fi on 48 buses and has plans to expand it to some van pools.

Civic leaders say they're willing to foot the bill for the free service because they believe shoppers, tourists and residents crave connectivity, and will follow it to downtown areas and business districts.

"People just expect that they should be able to open their laptop and receive a Wi-Fi signal," within a downtown area, said Paul Dunn, technical-service manager for the city of Kent. "It's like a standard ingredient."

More than 300 cities and other public entities across the country have launched Wi-Fi experiments.

The city of Seattle's pilot project is estimated to cost $100,000 to operate this year. In January through October of 2006, 12,000 people used it.

Bellevue's network cost $100,000 for the equipment, plus an additional $40,000 for installation. For the last 11 days of May, there were 513 unique users in 963 sessions.

An average of 30 to 50 people use Kirkland's public access each day, said Brenda Cooper, Kirkland's chief information officer. The year-old pilot project has thus far cost about $120,000.

Kent's free public network, which costs the city $35,000 to $40,000, gets an average of 800 to 850 visits per month, said Paul Dunn, the city's technical-services manager.

One of the most ambitious projects is just beginning in Pierce County, where 14 cities have teamed up with CenturyTel to build and operate a countywide network.

Some Puget Sound cities that built networks for public safety and for their own employees who work in the field, such as meter readers, are finding that public access can be a byproduct of that effort.

Renton, for example, spent $20,000 to build a wireless network for its public-safety department and left it open for public use, said city spokeswoman Preeti Shridhar. It was a boon during winter storms, when residents who lacked power used their laptops in their cars in the parking lots, she said.

Auburn, Issaquah, Mercer Island, Redmond, Renton and Sammamish have so far limited use of their technology to police, fire, emergency operations and city employees, though some allow public access inside or near city buildings.

Cities from Tukwila to Fife are surveying their residents to determine the need for similar projects.

Other government agencies have gone further, putting public access points in parks and business districts as a way to drive traffic to them and — they hope — create a more vibrant downtown that will attract other businesses to locate there.

It's too early to say whether, and where, it will work.

In King County, free public Wi-Fi has already made Marymoor Park a more attractive venue for shows such as Cirque du Soleil, said Jessie Israel, a spokeswoman for the county parks. The show's producers liked the fact that cast and crew, who lived at the site temporarily last summer, did not have to go elsewhere to use the Internet.

David Kerr, a technology manager for Bellevue, said Wi-Fi in the city's Downtown Park will help vendors at the upcoming Bellevue Arts Museum ArtsFair conduct credit-card transactions.

"We think this network will make the downtown area more attractive, more vibrant, more energetic," Kerr said.

David Keyes, director of community technology programs for the city of Seattle, said the response to the city's two zones has been good so far.

"From the users' perspective, we saw quite a bit of support," he said of the pilot. "It has brought people down to shop in the area where they might not have otherwise."

King County Metro Transit's extended Wi-Fi pilot project will continue through at least the remainder of 2007 as Metro collects surveys from riders who have used it.

Riders on routes without the Wi-Fi have been requesting the service, said David Martinez, chief information officer for the county's Office of Information and Resource Management.

The newest phase of the pilot, first launched in 2005, will assess the effectiveness of Wi-Fi service on longer commute bus trips serving communities from Kenmore to Federal Way. And later this spring, Metro will add Wi-Fi to several van pools to gauge the technology's effectiveness in smaller commuter vehicles.

"Since we launched the first phase of the Wi-Fi pilot, we've learned that many of our customers have come to rely on and appreciate this service — especially those traveling long distances to get to school or work," King County Executive Ron Sims said.

Assessment of these projects is so far largely subjective.

"Nobody has a great way of defining what success looks like or measuring what [they're] doing," said Paul Taylor, chief strategy officer at the Center for Digital Democracy, a nonprofit advocacy group. "That's the struggle."

It's one reason some experts have cooled on public hot zones. Redundancy is another.

"The average person generally will find cheap or free Internet service," either from coffee shops or libraries or at home, said Craig Settles, an industry consultant and author of "Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless." "They don't need to get it from the city."

Those who do use it have their own set of standards. For example, Sidoine, the Marymoor Park user, believes the public would benefit from kiosks for Wi-Fi, like those in airlines' business-class lounges, to keep out glare and protect users from the elements. He'd also like to see more support for people who have trouble connecting to the network.

Without such creature comforts, "I'm not sure it's worth it," Sidoine said.

Amy Roe: 206-464-3347 or aroe@seattletimes.com