The Reuben H. Fleet Science Center and the One America Plaza building will soon be involved in a project intended to make wireless Internet access one of San Diego's business and tourist attractions.

As part of the Bandwidth Bay initiative, the two facilities will in the next several weeks become free Wi-Fi access points, called "hotspots." Inside the buildings and in lobbies and courtyards, typically within at least 1,000 feet, wireless device users can tap into a Wi-Fi network. Wi-Fi is a term short for wireless fidelity.
They join hotspot locations already in use at the Santa Fe Depot, the NBC building and the 101 W. Broadway building in downtown San Diego.

Bandwidth Bay is a joint effort of private and public organizations including the city of San Diego, the Centre City Development Corp., the San Diego Economic Development Corp., Ensemble Communications, Wireless Facilities Inc. (Nasdaq: WFII), Sentre Partners and XO Communications (OTC: XOCM.OB).
Organizers say Wi-Fi networks are a low-cost way to promote business and tourism in the downtown area; establishing a network typically runs about $20,000, and costs a few hundred dollars a month to maintain. Lawyers could meet in a boardroom without scurrying back to their desktop computers for a file. Doctors attending a medical convention could check e-mails without tracking down a modem.

"This is a tool for business development downtown," said Derek Danziger, communications manager with the Centre City Development Corp. "This keeps San Diego at the forefront of technology savvy cities."
The idea isn't exclusively San Diego's. San Francisco has experimented with free Wi-Fi hotspots for several years, and New York City's nonprofit Downtown Alliance intends to deploy seven hotspots in lower Manhattan during the month of May.

These free, city-sponsored programs are considered among the first of their kind, as compared to the fee-based approach taken by corporations including Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX).

Downtown San Diego's hotspots were first made public in October 2002. Bandwidth Bay officials said usage numbers are not yet available.

Jordan Silbert, director of rebuilding initiatives for the Downtown Alliance in New York, said his organization saw Wi-Fi as "one more piece in the puzzle" of economic development.

The various hot spot sites will be an asset to New York businesspeople, drive commercial office space leases, attract tourists who will go on to patronize local restaurants and stores, and show the rest of the nation that lower Manhattan is "open for business" post-Sept. 11, Silbert said.

Matt Spathas, a partner with Sentre Partners, said Tuesday the Wi-Fi network set up at downtown San Diego's One America Plaza will be unique in that the entire building -- all 34 floors, four parking levels, an outdoor plaza and trolley station -- will be Wi-Fi-enabled. Wi-Fi access at the ground floor level will be made possible by Bandwidth Bay, while the rest of the building was set up with wireless Internet access by his other venture, a bandwidth business called Bandwidth Now.
The Reuben H. Fleet Science Center network is distinctive because it will expand the Bandwidth Bay project out of the immediate downtown area and into Balboa Park, Spathas said.

Ultimately, San Diego must compete with other big U.S. cities for business and tourism, he said.
"San Diego may be the wireless capital as it refers to cellular (technology), ... but we're not the Wi-Fi capital yet," Spathas said.

He said San Diego needs more people interested in making wireless Internet widely available in the region, and to educate more people about how user-friendly the technology can be.

To that end, Bandwidth Bay organizers are planning a "connect event" at the Santa Fe Depot for sometime this summer. They intend to invite people to bring their wireless devices to the station, log on to the Internet and get any help they might need from on-hand tech support.

Though some newer computers come pre-installed with the components to tap into a wireless network, most laptops and other wireless devices require that a Wi-Fi network card and certain software be installed.