Copyright 
Dow Jones & Company Inc Jun 16, 2003 RON HARDIN HAS a common complaint about one of the hippest trends in business travel, so-called hot spots for wireless Internet access.
He says he can't find them.
"I've been reading about the growing number of hot spots in hotels and airports, but I'm still having a hard time finding them," says Mr. Hardin, who as technology director at Davidson Hotel Co. in Memphis, Tenn., is no stranger to high tech or travel.
Hot spots are locations where small transmitters using wireless-fidelity, or Wi-Fi, technology create local wireless networks -- usually covering several hundred square feet -- where anyone who has a computer with a Wi-Fi card can get wireless access to the Internet.
For business travelers, they can be a godsend. "When you're at the airport and your flight is three hours delayed, it is really nice to pull out your laptop right there at the gate and log on," says Geoff Griswold, general manager of Seattle technology-services company Omni Group Inc. "I use Wi-Fi everywhere I can."
Still, many business travelers, while enthralled with the possibilities, say hot spots are too few and far between to be of practical use. "I'd love to use Wi-Fi when I travel, and I travel a lot," says Stephen A. Elop, executive vice president for world-wide field operations at San Francisco's Macromedia Inc. "The reality is that [Wi-Fi] is barely available anywhere."
That kind of frustration is understandable. Yes, the number of hot spots is growing quickly. Some 28,680 in North America this year will serve 4.7 million users, up from 3,800 hot spots and 1.6 million users last year, says Research Director William Clark of the technology-research firm Gartner Inc., Stamford, Conn. Hot spots in Asia, meanwhile, will more than double to 26,400 from 10,091 in 2002, and in Europe the number will surge to 15,700 from less than 900, Mr. Clark adds. Global demand is expected to grow to 30.5 million users by the end of 2004, as hot spots become increasingly numerous in major airports, hotels and cafes. Soon they'll even be popping up on street corners. Verizon Communications Inc. says it will offer Wi-Fi from about 1,000 phone booths around New York City by the end of this year.
But the number of Wi-Fi access points is still far from enough to provide blanket coverage.
So how do you find them?
Occasionally, hot spots find you. You might start up your Internet browser in an airport waiting area, for example, and get a prompt saying your computer has detected a Wi-Fi signal. But sometimes, you may want to do some scouting before you make a trip. In that case, an online search, naturally enough, is the best way to start looking for hot spots.
You can search for Wi-Fi access points by city, state and country at two types of sites. One type is run by a wireless Internet service provider, or WISP, and lists only the WISP's own hot spots. At stayonline.net/clientsstate.html, for example, you find just those hotels that offer a Wi-Fi network provided by StayOnline Inc. of Atlanta. The other type of site is run by an independent group that gathers locations for all manner of free and commercial hot spots, regardless of who operates them.
Neither approach is all-inclusive, however, meaning that you should log on to multiple sites to get an accurate hot-spot picture for your next trip. At Hotspot-Locations.com, run by the privately owned Zurich-based company Hotspot-Locations, if you enter "Seattle," then "restaurants," you come up with half a dozen Seattle restaurants with Wi-Fi on the menu, plus an indication of whether you have to pay for the service. However, a query on the same site for coffee shops in Atlanta with Wi-Fi turns up none -- although another site, 80211hotspots.com , lists nearly two dozen Wi-Fi-enabled Starbucks Corp. outlets in Atlanta. That site is a unit of Jupitermedia Corp., Darien, Conn.
At major U.S. airports, fortunately, Wi-Fi is increasingly available. "In most of the big airports, you open your laptop and you get a signal," says Mark G. Haley, a partner at Prism Partnership LLC, a Boston-based travel and hospitality consulting firm.
To find out exactly in which airports and in what areas of those airports hot spots are found, search tools from three of the leading WISPs are probably your best bet. Go to: Wayport.net, from Austin, Texas-based Wayport Inc.; T-Mobile.com/hotspot, from T-Mobile USA Inc., a unit of Germany's Deutsche Telekom AG; or Boingo.com, from Boingo Wireless Inc., Santa Monica, Calif. Though each mentions only the airports the provider itself serves, their lists are extensive and precise.
A lot of the airport spots are found in airline club and frequent-flier lounges. But some are heading for the gate areas as well.
AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, for one, offers T-Mobile service in 25 of its Admirals Club lounges across the U.S. UAL Corp.'s United Airlines offers T-Mobile as well at its Red Carpet Club in San Francisco International Airport, and has plans to add Wi-Fi to its airport lounges across the country. But you'll also find T-Mobile in boarding areas at many airports, including some gates in Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh and San Jose, Calif., and throughout the public areas of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas.
Some airport lounges -- such as those of Germany's Lufthansa -- offer Wi-Fi free to club members or any business-class and first-class passengers. Others, such as American Airlines Admirals Clubs, require customers to pay the standard WISP fees. With T-Mobile, the provider for American Airlines, you can pay as you go -- for 10 cents a minute -- or buy a subscription for $29.99 a month if you take a one-year contract. The way payments generally work is, when a Wi-Fi user initiates a connection, a sign-on page from the WISP appears, offering payment options and rates. New users can pay with a credit card -- or at the counter, if the hot spot is at a cafe, for example. Subscription holders simply log in with the user information they've already set up with their WISP.
Lufthansa recently launched its free Wi-Fi service at 55 lounges in 30 airports. Another European airline, SAS, offers Wi-Fi access in its lounges around the world, provided by Telia HomeRun, part of the Swedish telecommunications giant TeliaSonera AB.
Train stations in Europe also have hot spots, as do a few in the U.S., such San Diego's downtown Santa Fe Depot. Europe's Wi-Fi-enabled stations include those in Copenhagen, Stockholm and London, to name a few. "I used a service while having sushi at the Paddington train station" in London, says Mike O'Mahoney, group information-technology director at United Kingdom-based European hotel group Queens Moat Houses PLC, which offers Wi-Fi access at many of its hotels. "Wi-Fi use is going to be explosive."
In some parts of the world, Wi-Fi has made it aboard the trains and planes themselves. Beginning this month, the high-speed train between Copenhagen and Goteborg, Sweden, offers Wi-Fi access for 80 kronor, or about $10, per trip. And in October, Icomera AB, the Goteborg company that set up the service, plans to expand it to trains between Oslo and Stockholm.
British Airways and Lufthansa have both tested airborne Wi-Fi recently. (Airline officials say the short-distance radio waves transmitted by Wi-Fi don't interfere with the aircraft's satellite communications.) Lufthansa, which offered free Wi-Fi on flights between Washington and Frankfurt for three months recently, says it expects to sell Wi-Fi aboard 80 long-haul planes by mid-2004 for about $30, or for frequent-flier points. British Airways sold a $25 Wi-Fi service on flights between London and New York from February to May, but it won't say whether it will continue the service. SAS, meanwhile, plans to launch onboard Wi-Fi next year.
"It's going to revolutionize the whole travel experience," says a Lufthansa spokeswoman.
Perhaps, but first it's going to revolutionize the coffee break. Business travelers with a spare 15 minutes can now plop themselves down in a Wi-Fi-friendly coffee shop or bookstore. T-Mobile USA offers Wi-Fi access at more than 2,100 Starbucks coffee shops in the U.S. and is expanding the service to hundreds of Borders Group Inc. bookstores. Scores of independent cafes already are known for their free Wi-Fi service. McDonald's Corp. also is testing Wi-Fi at some of its restaurants in New York.
Wi-Fi may not alter your choice of cuisine, but it could influence where you stay. More than 21,000 hotels around the world are expected to offer Wi-Fi by 2006, up from 2,200 this year, according to John Yunker, an analyst who watches the Wi-Fi market for Pyramid Research in Cambridge, Mass. Omni Hotels, based in Irving, Texas, offers Wi-Fi for free in its guest rooms in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and the Dallas area. Marriott International Inc., of Washington, has Wi-Fi access in the public spaces of some 400 hotels across its various franchises.
Countless other hotel chains in the U.S. and abroad have gone wireless as well. Queens Moat Houses sells Wi-Fi service from Swisscom Eurospot, a unit of Switzerland's Swisscom AG, at 27 of its hotels in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, and has plans to expand hot spots to all 92 of its hotels by year end. At the hotels of Hong Kong-based Shangri-La Asia Ltd. in Hong Kong, Singapore and Beijing, you'll find hot spots in guest rooms, restaurants and beside some swimming pools.
Hotel hot spots range from free to expensive. While Omni Hotels doesn't charge, the standard daily rate at U.S. hotels is about $10. In Marriott lobbies where the service is available, however, hot-spot usage costs $2.95 for the first 15 minutes and 25 cents for each additional minute -- or $14.20 for your first hour and $15 an hour thereafter. In Europe, by comparison, Queens Moat Houses charges 30 euros, or about $35, for 24 hours, 65 euros per week, or 115 euros per month.
Whatever you might be ready to pay, you need to keep your eyes open and your antennae up. On a recent business trip through Europe, Joshua Greenbaum, a principal at the consulting and research firm Enterprise Applications Consulting, of Daly City, Calif., was chatting about the wired-Internet service in his Amsterdam hotel room -- a service he had to pay extra for -- when the hotel clerk noticed that Mr. Greenbaum's laptop had a Wi-Fi card.
"He winked conspiratorially and said `Just hang around in the lobby and use our Wi-Fi network for free,'" recalls Mr. Greenbaum. "The next morning, I had breakfast and my e-mail in the lobby."
---
Ms. Borzo writes about technology and the Internet from California.
---
| Heat Seekers |
|
| Some sites that keep track of hot spots around the world for wireless |
| Internet access: |
|
| -- 80211hotspots.com |
|
| -- hotspot-locations.com |
|
| -- intel.com/products/mobiletechnology/ |
| hotspots/finder.htm?iid=ipp_mobiletech+cities_finder& |
|
| -- wififreespot.com |
|
| -- wifinder.com |
|
| -- wifizone.org/zonelocator.asp |
My Research
