EDITORIAL DESK

The Free Lane on the Information Highway

By Dalton Conley ( Op-Ed ) 912 words

That's a wonderful thing, but what's better is that WiFi holds the promise of bridging America's much discussed digital divide -- if we make it ubiquitous and free to use, like the public library system. After all, just as roads and bridges were among the most important public investments in the industrial period, wireless access to the Internet is arguably the most crucial public investment of the information age.

For now, though, wireless Internet access is a hodgepodge. In most cases, a home computer user buys a wireless router (which costs less than $100) that links to an Internet connection (which can cost several hundred dollars a year). The router then broadcasts a signal, which typically covers 300 feet to 1,600 feet, that allows all computers within that range to tap into the Internet. Some businesses, like coffee shops, have WiFi on their premises to lure customers. Some institutions also provide WiFi to the public. In Bryant Park, next to the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, laptop users can sit at one of the public tables on a glorious afternoon and read their e-mail while sipping a latte, thanks to the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation. Similarly, Columbia University offers free wireless access on its campus.

But these are the exceptions; most of the wireless access points, or nodes, in Manhattan are provided, perhaps inadvertently, by individuals. I, for instance, don't ''lock'' my signal with a secret access code; I have an ''open node,'' and thus anyone within range is free to go on the Net through me. Since I pay for Internet service, I don't feel particularly guilty when I'm away from home and make use of someone else's portal to the Web. What's more, with WiFi technology, allowing other users to look at their e-mail through my hub isn't going to slow me down.

Not surprisingly, this type of thinking alarms Internet service providers, which maintain that users can't share their service. And there is certainly opportunity for abuse, as when apartment buildings charge residents a fee to log onto the Net using the building's WiFi hubs. Clearly, reselling a service under false pretenses, when the costs are borne by a different company that reaps no commission, is -- and should remain -- illegal.

But what about when individual users choose to make their WiFi available to the public at no charge? Are they merely exercising their right to use their service as they see fit -- analogous to inviting a few friends over to watch a video you rented? That's the argument being made by participants in a relatively unheralded movement among America's techies promoting free wireless access.

This movement has gained momentum in the past year, so I recently took a walk with my laptop around residential neighborhoods in Manhattan with the hope of seeing how WiFi access has changed since Public Internet Project.org conducted a census of the island in 2002. Back then, it found that about 30 percent of some 13,000 access nodes were locked. On my walk, I found that the proportion of locked nodes had increased, to just under half. I also found what the 2002 census did: as much as I wanted to stereotype neighborhoods as ''selfish'' or ''open,'' it seemed to be pretty random which areas had a higher proportion of open nodes. The best predictor of node density appears to be -- surprise, surprise -- the neighborhood's income level. For example, Harlem is about the only area left in Manhattan with significant dead space -- an obvious example of the digital divide.

But nodes are continuing to spread throughout the city and the country. On Nodeb.com, people list their open nodes, essentially inviting strangers to join a worldwide community of users. This site has more than 11,000 registered access points in the United States. Even if service providers can make it more difficult for users to share Internet access, techies will eventually find a way around them.

There is a market failure here: quasi-monopoly companies provide a service and try to prevent users from realizing returns to scale (that is, using one node for multiple laptops). The result is inefficiency (more hubs than we need, not distributed for maximum coverage) and inequality (between the free riders and those who pay for Internet service).

The public interest would be better served by the government stepping in and providing a public good -- an open wireless network -- while compensating the private companies that laid the wired part of the system for their one-time investment. To quote Benjamin Franklin, the founder of the first lending library in North America back in 1731: ''If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.'' How about both?

Correction: March 25, 2004, Thursday An Op-Ed article on Friday about wireless Internet access misstated the name of a service that lists locations where people are willing to share their wireless signal. It is NodeDB.com, not Nodeb.com. The article also misstated the number of such locations in the United States listed by the service. It is about 1,100, not more than 11,000.

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