August 7, 2000 - Want to surf at the beach without getting all soggy? The Key West Inn at Captain Hiram�s, a small resort midway up Florida�s eastern coast, is the place to do it. Rent a laptop computer at the front desk and take it down to the beachfront Sandbar. Then, while you sip a Bahama Blaster or a Rum Runner in comfort, browse the Web and catch up on your e-mail.

Oh, did we mention that you don�t plug in anywhere? Because the laptop has a wireless Internet connection, you can use it just about anyplace on the property�on the pool deck, for instance, or on your private balcony overlooking the Indian River Lagoon.

If this seems awfully newfangled, hold on to your swimming trunks.

Once-obscure wireless-networking technologies are going mainstream as U.S. hotel chains scramble to set up no-wire Net access for laptop-toting guests. The Key West Inn, co-owned by a Twin Cities firm, has been joined by a few local hotels with more on the way.

Airports are going wireless, too. Companies such as Wayport, MobileStar, SoftNet Zone and Global Digital Media are equipping air hubs with high-speed networks that any traveler with compatible gear can access in seconds. Squeezing in a little business e-mail or Web recreation during layovers has become easier�no more plugging into pay-phone data ports.

Just ask Marc Juele of Dallas, who has high-speed Internet access at home and hates using pokey dial-up connections when traveling. Now he doesn�t have to. Austin-based Wayport rolled out high-speed wireless service at the Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin-Bergstrom international airports this summer, which means Juele can crack his Sony mini-laptop and hop online hassle-free.

When he first hooked up to a Wayport network last month, �I had 15 e-mails (with large attachments) in my outbox,� says Juele, who works for a marketing company in suburban Dallas. Sending those messages �would have taken me 20 or 30 minutes with a dial-up connection,� but with Wayport �they flew out in 10 seconds, and I picked up eight more.�

He adds: �I had stocks that were tanking. So, while standing in line to get on a plane, I conducted two trades.�

Such wireless services, aimed largely at the corporate crowd, have potential consumer appeal. 

Now that laptop makers such as Apple Computer are popularizing the use of wireless-communication cards with their consumer portables as part of high-speed home networks, any Macintosh iBook owner on holiday can use a Wayport network just as easily as a business traveler with a beefy Dell Latitude.

The Key West Inn could be among the first of many hotels to offer rental laptops with wireless hook-ups for vacationers who can�t bear to be without their e-mail while lounging pool-side. Even parents rent the Key West laptop for their kids to use, says Kirby Payne, president of Minneapolis-based American Hospitality Management.

How many consumers or business workers will use public wireless networks in coming years is anybody�s guess. 

Hyped for more than two years, such services have only recently seen widespread deployment in airports, hotels and convention centers.  Coverage is still spotty, though, and users remain relatively scarce.

Some say the high-speed services provided by Wayport and its ilk are pricey frills, and that dial-up connections suffice for the vast majority of laptop-equipped travelers.

Or they can use cell phones. Wireless-phone providers such as Sprint provide handsets that double as modems when connected to laptops. Sprint�s pokey connection speeds of about 19 kilobits per second will soon be boosted to the equivalent of 56 Kbps using data-compression techniques, the company says.
But high-speed wireless networks in public venues have ardent backers who see them becoming ubiquitous before long.

�Public-space wireless Internet access will definitely �fly� in a big way,� says Terry Nozick, a computer-industry analyst with Silicon Valley-based Mobile Insights. �We expect all major hotel chains and airports to be wirelessly enabled over the next two years.�

Wireless access in hotels is part of a push to offer all kinds of high-speed access, including wired setups that allow guests to plug laptops into Ethernet ports much like those found in offices.  Twin Cities firms such as Sentr@NET and Cyberoom focus mainly on setting up hotels for wired Net access and have yet to deploy wireless services.

About 48 percent of hotels recently surveyed by the Cahners In-Stat Group said they planned to offer high-speed Net access of one sort or another in the next year, creating a potentially vast market for both wired and wireless providers.
Two Twin Cities hotels, the Hilton Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport in Bloomington and the Holiday Inn Minneapolis-West in St. Louis Park, now provide wireless access thanks to Texas-based MobileStar. This means guests can use their Windows laptops with Proxim wireless-networking cards for high-speed surfing in many parts of the hotels.

A Pioneer Press reporter had little trouble using a MobileStar-supplied IBM ThinkPad with a Proxim card to log on to the Hilton�s wireless network and use it in public areas for minutes at a time. Minor glitches sometimes forced reboots, but the system otherwise performed reliably.

Two local Holiday Inns and the Wyndham Garden Bloomington have signed on with Wayport and may roll out wireless service this year. The Wyndham says it plans to offer it as a free perk for repeat visitors. The service, which works with both Windows and Macintosh laptops, is �absolutely phenomenal,� says manager Jim Saccoman.

Florida�s Key West Inn will soon be joined by sister hotels in Minnesota and elsewhere. American Hospitality Management, which co-owns five hotels and manages a total of 13, says it will work with Wayport to aggressively deploy wireless access. Payne sees it becoming �as standard as TVs and phones in rooms.�

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport intends to bring in two or more wireless providers within the next year, according to Brian Peters of the Metropolitan Airports Commission.

Setting up such a system is an exercise in stealth technology.  Providers tuck small devices dubbed �access points� in nooks and crannies throughout a hotel or airport terminal. At the Dallas airport, Wayport has hidden the gizmos above false ceilings. At the Austin airport, they�re wedged between flight-gate TV monitors.

Once several dozen access points are carefully positioned every few hundred feet in a terminal, they piggyback on wired networks and extend them out to wireless-enabled laptop users who use simple log-on routines for getting connected. They are then able to work in one spot or �roam� within the facility without losing their connections.

Don�t have a networking card for your laptop? Not a problem �

Wayport is setting up kiosks to sell the $150 cards, which also are available in computer stores from the likes of 3Com, Cisco and Lucent. 

In a scene that will eventually be repeated nationwide, Wayport staffers at the Austin and Dallas airports let visitors play with laptops so they�ll experience high-speed wireless access for the first time.

Wayport claims connection speeds approaching 11 megabits per second, or 50 to 200 times faster than a conventional 56-kilobit-per-second analog-modem connection. Yet the company is making its service relatively affordable -- $35 for 10 unlimited-time connections, with the first 50 hook-ups free for now.

The common IEEE 802.11b wireless-networking technology that Wayport makes available mainly to Windows users also has been exploited by Apple Computer in its Macintosh AirPort products.  These include UFO-like access-point devices dubbed �base stations� along with networking cards that slip into recent-model Mac iBook or Powerbook laptops.

The 1-year-old AirPort system, aimed largely at home and small-office users, saw a large-scale public deployment earlier this year when several thousand software developers gathered at an Apple-sponsored conference in Silicon Valley. Eighteen AirPort base stations were placed throughout the San Jose Convention Center, allowing up to 450 roving Mac-heads to check e-mail or surf the Web simultaneously.

�The things worked like a charm,� says Curtis Juliber, a Twin Cities-based Apple representative, referring to the AirPort saucers.

Other companies are rushing to deploy 802.11b-based wireless networks. Global Digital Media now offers access at the Philadelphia International Airport. SoftNet Zone operates in the Vancouver and Ottawa international airports. It also has an arrangement with Delta to provide wireless connectivity at the airline�s gates and in its Crown Room Clubs.

MobileStar has inked a similar deal with American Airlines to offer wireless access at Admiral�s Clubs and airline gates. MobileStar users have been hampered by the company�s adherence to the OpenAir wireless protocol with connections of only about 1 Mbps compared to 802.11b�s 2- to 11-Mbps access.  But the firm says it will soon support both protocols.

Minnesota�s dominant air carrier, Northwest Airlines, is �evaluating the merits of competing products,� says spokeswoman Mary Beth Schubert. �Out intention is to have (wireless access) in our World Clubs� and elsewhere. She didn�t say when.

Not all are convinced that a push for wireless access in public venues is imperative now, however.

Bloomington-based Sentr@NET remains focused on equipping hotels with wired Net access�it now has networks in place at about two dozen facilities in eight states. While the firm plans to offer 802.11b access in some places, it says such setups make the most sense in facilities where conventional networks are difficult to install.

For now, PC wireless-communications cards are expensive and wireless - networking protocols are works in progress, which means �the wireless high-speed connectivity model is one that will take a while to roll out,� says Sentr@NET President Ian Mackay. �I don�t think the answers are all in.�

(c) 1999, Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Minn. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.