ON a brisk autumn day in Portland, Ore., Paul van Veen was soaking up some sun as he logged on to the Internet -- from a spot in bustling Pioneer Courthouse Square. Mr. van Veen was looking for a job, and he was surfing the Web over a free wireless connection.
These days, Pioneer Courthouse Square is but one of some 140 public spots across Portland with free Internet access using a high-speed wireless technology known as Wi-Fi. The network of such Wi-Fi ''hot spots'' throughout the city was developed by Personal Telco, a grass-roots, nonprofit group devoted to blanketing the city with free access points.
Portland and Personal Telco are just part of a growing national trend. There are community groups promoting public Wi-Fi access in nearly every large American city, from NYCwireless, which ''unwired'' Bryant Park and Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan, to KC Wireless in the Kansas City area. They have been joined by independent cafes and restaurants, apartment houses and community centers across the country that view free, easy access to the Internet as a draw for customers.
At the same time, subscription services and pay-as-you-go Wi-Fi hot spots are springing up in cafes, bookstores, hotels and airports, put in by companies like T-Mobile and smaller, start-up competitors like Boingo Wireless and Wayport. Last week, Cometa Networks, a new company backed by Intel, AT&T and I.B.M., said it planned to put a network of thousands of wireless access points across a huge swath of the nation by 2004. The result is a growing array of options for Wi-Fi users and the emergence of a mobile wireless culture that spans business travelers, teachers and students, people relaxing in coffee shops and even moviegoers waiting for the show.
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