Wi-Fi Almost Ready to Fly

A peninsula-wide wireless Internet network will be mostly completed by the end of January, though some residents can tap into parts of the so-called Wi-Fi system already.

Ernest Andrade, the city of Charleston economic-development official who organized the project, said Friday that almost all of the telecommunications hardware is in place and is being tested in advance of a "soft launch" on Jan. 18.

Andrade pitched the wireless network as a way to lure relocating businesses to the city and boost computer literacy in poor households. "The real story will be how it's doing six months from now," he said.

The city solicited bids earlier this year for the airborne Internet "cloud" - dubbed Wi-Fi, which is short for wireless fidelity. In September, it picked a proposal by Widespread Access, a Mount Pleasant telecom company, and Charleston-based Evening Post Publishing Co., which publishes The Post and Courier. The two companies, licensed under the moniker Access Charleston.com, agreed to invest close to $500,000 to get the system up and running.

"We kind of had this thing planned out before we started the buildout, so everything's gone pretty smoothly," said Sam Staley, president of Widespread Access.

Residents with a relatively new computer or a $30 to $50 Wi-Fi network card installed on an older machine will be able to tap into signals from a grid of radio transmitters that Widespread Access has installed around the peninsula. Some Web surfers may already be doing so in small pockets where the system has been activated for testing.

The companies involved hope the service will lead to other business opportunities. Staley's firm plans to offer users the option of buying faster Internet connections through the grid. Evening Post is looking to increase advertising revenue and newspaper subscriptions by handling the network's content, which will be organized through what is essentially a home page. It will include links to local news articles, weather reports and restaurants.

Charleston's Wi-Fi plan has come under fire from telephone and cable companies that say municipal "hot spot" Internet services unfairly compete with them and undermine private-sector investment. But the city and the companies installing the system said the criticism is unfounded because taxpayers are not subsidizing the project.

Similar debates are raging nationwide as more Wi-Fi networks are developed around the country by local governments that who think wireless Internet should be a free, or at least a subsidized, public service. Phone and cable companies that stand to lose customers have lobbied lawmakers to pre-empt such services. But the list of cities building wireless Internet clouds has grown quickly. Just before Christmas, for example, San Francisco sought bids to build a new wireless Internet grid.

If the Charleston project goes as planned, Evening Post has said it will try setting up similar networks in the other communities where it does business. The company owns 23 media outlets, including newspapers in South Carolina, North Carolina and Texas; TV stations in California, Colorado, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana and Texas. It also publishes a daily English-language newspaper in Buenos Aires.