Jennifer Beauprez

July 28, 2003

Jul. 28--While superstar Dave Matthews grooved to "So Much To Say" on Tuesday night in Denver, Joe Lawlor stood 20 feet away with a laptop computer, recording every note to a database on the Internet.

The Pepsi Center crowd of 17,000 people was wired, but Lawlor was not. As the band's sound technician, he uses new wireless networking technology to record every concert online in hopes that the really great performances can be released for sale someday.

"When these guys strike a note, it's a dollar," Lawlor said. "We want to own every moment." The jam band is taking more control of its fame and fortune with a hot wireless Internet technology called Wi-Fi.

It lets the band bring the equivalent of a corporate office on the road, connecting some 80 crew members via laptop computers on each stop of a 42-city summer tour.

"Every year it grows," said Ian Kuhn, the chain-smoking sound director who designed the network and software as a hobby a few years ago.

"More and more people within the tour find different ways to use it," he said.

So does the rest of the world. Wi-Fi -- which stands for "wireless fidelity" -- connects computers and other devices to landline Internet connections and even to each other. It uses the same wireless frequency as cordless phones.

Cheap and easy to install, Wi-Fi is taking high-speed Internet out of the office and home and bringing it into concert arenas, coffee shops, parks, college campuses and factory floors.

That power has made Wi-Fi the talk of the tech industry and may be one of the sector's few bright spots in light of a dim economy.

Investors put $747 million into 113 Wi-Fi-related startups in the first eight months of 2002, and the nation's most powerful corporations are pursuing their own Wi-Fi strategies.

Starbucks and wireless phone provider T-Mobile led the hype, turning coffee shops into "hot spots" -- public places where people with a laptop computer can connect to the Internet wirelessly if they buy access for up to $40 a month. By year's end, 2,600 Starbucks shops will feature the technology.

Intel is spending $300 million to market its Centrino technologies, which aim to put Wi-Fi capabilities in all portable computers that use its chips.

McDonald's two weeks ago unveiled plans to equip 75 San Francisco restaurants with Wi-Fi to encourage people to surf while they slurp.

And Baby Bell Verizon Communications has promised to turn 200,000 pay phones in New York City into Wi-Fi hotspots.

Hotspots are also popping up in dozens of airports -- including Denver International Airport -- as well as convention centers and hotels. Companies such as AT&T Corp. are eager to sell traveling business executives Wi-Fi subscriptions to surf those networks.

"In the future, Wi-Fi will be ubiquitous wherever you're hanging out -- it will go from landline to be in the air we breathe," said David Hagan, president of Boingo Wireless, a Santa Monica, Calif., company that plans to be the back-office integrator for creating a national Wi-Fi roaming network.

But that's hype for the future. Industry experts say people today don't want the costly subscriptions -- up to $40 a month -- or have too much trouble finding hotspots and easily hopping from one to another.

The real action right now is not public hotspots but private networks: those wireless connections inside thousands of American homes, small businesses and such operations as the Dave Matthews Band.

Wi-Fi gives Dave Matthews crew members the simple conveniences of keeping in touch while on the road for six months at a time.

At each venue, the crew scatters 7-foot antennas that talk to a wireless access point -- a device the size of a clock radio that connects to the Internet over a high-speed phone line -- and out to some 50 laptop computers and two dozen buses and semi-trucks.

Kuhn said the technology ultimately will give the band -- rather than the ticketing agents and recording labels -- more ownership of its music.

On the road, the band is connected to its ticketing office in Charlottesville, Va., where it sells half of its tickets via its fan website. And by recording every tune played, even during jam sessions, the band hopes to create an archive of music that one day could be a money-maker if released for sale. (The band has released a number of live albums, including two recorded in Colorado.) "We're trying to produce our own version of the Beatles Anthology real-time," said Kuhn, who has started a Chicago company, Production Consultants Guild, to sell his touring software and networking tips to artists like Norah Jones and Coldplay.

The band's 80-person crew -- from pastry chefs to lighting directors -- also can check e-mail, tap into the latest hotel accommodations and get real-time production direction on 96 songs that could be played during the show.

For instance, cues on the computers remind lighting directors to shine the spotlight on violinist Boyd Tinsley during a solo. And cameras get hints to zoom in tight for images on the overhead video screens, Kuhn said.

But even the not-so-famous are reaping the benefits of the Wi-Fi revolution, and perhaps leading it.

Nearly one-quarter of U.S. homes have multiple computers and a growing number of them are using Wi-Fi to share high-speed Internet connections, files and even printers, according to Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass., firm that tracks technology trends.

For less than $100, people can buy a Wi-Fi access point -- a small box that includes an Internet router and a two-way Wi-Fi radio. It creates the wireless connection between the user and the modem, which hooks up to a phone line or TV cable.

Users also must install a $30-to-$50 wireless antenna on their computer, video game console, or whatever else they want to connect to the Wi-Fi network.

"People don't want to pay an electrician to bust into their walls and lay wires everywhere," said Ken Dulaney, a wireless analyst at market research firm Gartner Inc. "It's so easy to go to Best Buy," he said, referring to the home electronics retail chain.

Sales of Wi-Fi equipment are hot, growing 31 percent to $2.1 billion last year from $1.6 billion in 2001, according to Gartner. The firm predicts sales for Wi-Fi equipment will grow to $3.9 billion in 2007.

Investing in wireless equipment saved the sanity at Vicki Schmidt's household.

The Elizabeth resident's three teenagers constantly jockeyed for position to grab the only high-speed Internet connection, while their dad, Phil, staked his claim to the computer he uses to run his commercial real-estate business from home.

"We were always fighting over the Internet connection," Schmidt said. For $413, the family hired a small Parker firm, Pro-WiFi, to network the family's four computers and printer together and to the Internet.

"It doesn't make any difference how many people are online now," Schmidt said.

Home users like Schmidt are driving more widespread adoption of the technology inside businesses too, said Greg Mesch, chief executive officer of Roving Planet, a Boulder firm selling software to manage Wi-Fi networks.

Those Wi-Fi junkies love the mobility so much that they're pushing their employers to provide it. If the companies refuse, some renegades secretly set up Wi-Fi networks under their desks at work, he said.

"People said, 'We don't care, we're bringing in our laptops anyway,'" Mesch said. "Now everyone is beginning to jump on the bandwagon." Real estate agents, insurance agents, car dealers and veterinarians all are connecting their offices with Wi-Fi, said Larry Maslin, who runs Pro-WiFi with his wife, Marilyn, and provides Wi-Fi installation and support.

Carol Parker was one of Maslin's customers. The traveling businesswoman put Wi-Fi in the tractor-trailer she takes to dozens of horse shows each year. Inside the trailer is her portable retail store, Cross Creek Tack, which sells saddles, clothes and horse shampoo.

To handle the line of horse lovers that sometimes stretch out the door, Parker needed two cash registers instead of one. And she needed them to talk to each other.

So she got Wi-Fi. Eventually Parker wants to use the technology available at public hotspots to synch her store's transactions to her home office computer in Tucson, Ariz.

"I think it's slick technology," Parker said.

Larger firms also are finding handy uses. United Parcel Service, for instance, will spend $127 million in the next three years to create hotspots within its 1,700 shipping centers nationwide.

Universities, hospitals and elementary schools also are creating hotspots to let students and teachers roam while they surf and allow doctors to update patient charts remotely.

Even truck drivers who stop at the Flying J truck stop in Aurora and 27 other cities can tap into the Internet. The Flying J plans to connect all 154 of its truck stops nationwide by the end of September.

Yet some businesses still prefer to sit back and watch the Wi-Fi action unfold. Security is a key reason.

If proper security measures aren't taken, anyone with a Wi-Fi-equipped laptop easily can tap into a company's signal. That's a chief problem when workers secretly install Wi-Fi without consent of their employer.

"If (outsiders) detect and find these access points, they're in your corporate network and they can access corporate data," said Rajat Bhargava, CEO of Latis Networks Inc., a Superior startup that developed business software for wireless security.

Along with security concerns, experts say most of the public hotspot ventures such as those hyped by Starbucks and McDonald's won't make money for some time -- or ever. And others will flat out fail.

Those that survive must come up with price plans that can both grab enough consumers and pay the bills. T-Mobile already dropped its hourly hotspot prices from $14 to $6 in hopes of stimulating demand.

Carriers, too, must create a seamless wireless network of hotspots for Wi-Fi roaming, like the cellphone industry did.

Despite the hurdles ahead, industry watchers say the technology eventually will become pervasive.

"Everything is a work in progress," said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom analyst in Atlanta.

"The technology is on fire," he said. "This is the stuff that enables the Dick Tracy factor, where you watch the Dave Matthews Band on your wristwatch."

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(c) 2003, The Denver Post. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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