N.Y., N.Y., It's a Wireless Town

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02:00 AM Nov. 06, 2002 PT

Spending your summer retracing the map of Manhattan in an aging Nissan Sentra is no joyride.

Just ask Marcos R. Lara, who did just that earlier this year in an attempt to count the number of access points to wireless networks in the city.

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Lara, vice president of product management for OpenAir Communications, a wireless network operator, wanted to find out how prevalent Wi-Fi use was in Manhattan.

In the process of doing the study, he ran into his share of commuter traffic, road construction and recalcitrant pedestrians.

Then, the incessant "pinging" zapped him every time he hit a wireless network, which in Manhattan is quite often. Try 12,647 times for the number of Wi-Fi access points.

"It kept on going," Lara said. "I was looking for a way for it to stop."

But for the number of times Lara's laptop, which had special software to detect the network, pinged with information, a number of dollar signs blinked in his head.

Lara, who helped form a group that promotes 802.11b wireless Internet access in Manhattan, foresees a day in which anyone can stand on any street corner in the city and receive Internet access wirelessly.

All that's needed, he believes, is a way to "connect the dots" in the network.

In doing the study, he discovered that a wireless infrastructure is already in place throughout much of the city.

However, that infrastructure is owned by thousands of businesses and individuals. Technically it isn't open to the public.

Rather than continue to build more networks, Lara is proposing that owners of existing networks simply open them up to the public, if necessary, for a fee.

"When I saw this map, it was obvious there was already deployed infrastructure," Lara said. "If we can just connect it and get it to operate under one umbrella," everyone in the city can have wireless Internet access.

While security holes prevent companies from sharing their wireless networks with outsiders, Lara's idea isn't that far-fetched.

Sprint PCS (PCS) is the most recent company to unveil plans for Wi-Fi roaming nationwide. The company hasn't said when it will launch the service, but a Sprint executive told reporters on Monday that the company planned to let its customers roam onto competing phone companies' Wi-Fi networks and tack on any roaming fees to cell-phone bills.

"There are a number of companies and entrepreneurs looking at ways to introduce Wi-Fi to the masses," said Travis Larson, spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, "and this is certainly one of the many commercial possibilities."

But as Lara, Larson and telecom analysts admit, holes in wireless security need to be fixed before companies seriously consider opening their Wi-Fi networks to the public.

As Lara noted in his research, about 60 percent of the networks in Manhattan lack even basic encryption. That lets any technically savvy outsider obtain free Internet access and even retrieve information off people's computers.

Lara also pointed out that a number of wireless networks were sparse in the business-laden financial district of Manhattan -- probably because companies were reluctant to replace their wired-line systems with over-the-air Internet transmissions because of security concerns.

"This may sound good in some socialist utopia, but this is New York City," said Seamus McAteer, principal analyst for Zelos Group. "People are concerned with the privacy and security of their corporate networks."

Still, even if every business and individual user agreed to open their wireless networks to the public, it doesn't mean that everyone else in New York would suddenly have Internet access.

Why? Despite the near ubiquity of Wi-Fi in Manhattan, some areas remain without wireless access points. One of them is Harlem, which Lara found had almost no wireless activity.

To cross 96th Street into Harlem is like entering "a dead zone" of wireless networks, Lara said. "It is like the Grand Canyon."

With an average yearly income of $17,205, according to the 1990 U.S. census, Lara suspects the lack of wireless networks reflects the fact that many people can't afford laptop computers and the necessary PC cards to tap into the network in the first place.

"As the technology evolves, these are the last people to get affected by anything," Lara said. "They are the last in line. They can't afford it.

"I just thought it was amazing to see that."

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