Wonderful world of WiFi
I bought a WiFi card for my laptop a year ago, then waited around for one of my children to install it. They spent most of the year watching pirated downloads of the Fox cartoon ''Family Guy," so last month I decided to read the directions that came with the card: Insert in slot on right. That was easy.
Now I'm a fool for WiFi. I filed a column 10 days ago from a WiFi-enabled Los Angeles bar, and I'm filing this one from a public library. If Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline intend to follow in the footsteps of Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Tempe, Ariz., and set up citywide WiFi networks, I'll be coming to work even less than usual. I can plant myself in Christopher Columbus park, ogle the landing patterns at Logan, and tap out columns at my ease.
Let a thousand hot spots bloom!
WiFi has its detractors, to be sure. If a city plans to charge for the service, as Philadelphia does, the existing Internet providers cry foul. This even though their more expensive services offer considerably more signal strength and much better security. Michael Maggio, chief executive of security company Newbury Networks, points out that WiFi hookups like mine are ''promiscuous." ''Those cards will pick up any network they can find. It's easy for you to get on, but it's just as easy for someone who wants to take your credit card number to get on. WiFi is a really interesting and disruptive technology. But we better know what we're doing with the network."
Here's the tradeoff. I pay Comcast $45.95 a month for high-speed Internet service, but I'm perfectly satisfied with the WiFi signal at the library. Cost to Alex = $0.00. I'm not particularly hung up on security, but that's nothing a little identity theft won't cure.
Mary Hart, Cambridge's chief information officer, plans to give all residents free WiFi at a cost to the city of well under $1 million. She says her bargain-basement signal shouldn't threaten existing service providers like Comcast and Verizon. ''It's like having a phone," she explains. ''If you want to call long-distance, you'll have to pay more."
Comcast declined to comment. Verizon executive C.L. Hoewing said it ''makes more sense to see what's available on the market" than for cities to set up their own Internet services. A Verizon subsidiary, SkyTel, is on the short list of possible WiFi providers for Brookline.
One of the purported goals of municipal WiFi is to bridge the ''digital divide," and provide decent Internet connections to disadvantaged neighborhoods. Philadelphia, working with EarthLink, plans to offer a subsidized rate of $9.95 a month for families who can't afford its higher WiFi rates, ranging up to $20. (Verizon offers a fairly high-speed Internet connection for $14.95 a month.) In theory, households that can't afford good Internet connections will get them when Wireless Philadelphia comes online later this year.
But the ''divide" will continue to exist. Cambridge's Hart says she likes to send pictures and music over the Internet, but the city's free wireless system will be too slow for that. So she'll be using both the city's free WiFi, and the high-speed Internet ''pipe" in her home.
In the same vein, I'd like to hang out at Christopher Columbus park all day, but my children want to access their gray-market ''Family Guy" episodes. For that they'll ''need" the gold-plated Comcast cable pipeline. So I won't be out from under those bills anytime soon.
There it is on the statue of baseball and football legend Harry Agganis, ''the Golden Greek": ''Always excel." BC translates the famous quote from the sixth book of Homer's ''Iliad" as ''Ever to Excel" . . . but it's all Greek to me.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist.His e-dress is beam@globe.com 
