Unwire Everywhere

When wireless connectivity debuted at Minneapolis-based Dunn Bros Coffee in early 2002, it was more by chance than by plan. The chain originally planned to install wired, ad-subsidized Web terminals. But the digital-media company hired to do the job, SurfThing, wanted to avoid laying cables in the quirkily laid out caf�, so it installed an 802.11b access point. Dunn Bros wasn't eager to add wireless access to its offerings, alongside its beverages and pastries, at least until it had figured out a way of making the service pay, says Greg Wallgren, CEO of SurfThing. Regardless of what Dunn Bros thought, this didn't stop savvy surfers from discovering and using the access point, and an underground hot spot was born.

SurfThing smartly began using 802.11b technology for all of its Dunn Bros installations, and each new location in turn became a stealth hot spot. By August 2002, ten caf�s were unofficial hot spots, and Dunn Bros and SurfThing finally went public with the secret, even though it hadn't found a way to charge for its service.

Today, 20 Dunn Bros outlets offer wireless connectivity, and the company expects most future franchises to be hot spots. SurfThing has devised a method of displaying ads in wireless users' browser windows, and Dunn Bros has conceded that wireless can pay even when not metered.

"It's kind of snowballed to the point where people seek us out," says Scott Kee, director of purchasing at Dunn Bros. "Folks come in with their laptops and get their e-mail, surf the Web, have their meetings, and whatever. Usually they have a cup of coffee, too. We appreciate that." The wireless phenomenon isn't found only at Dunn Bros's coffee shops in the Twin Cities. Today, people are downloading data during layovers in airports and wirelessly connecting to the Internet from the floors of convention centers. They're instant-messaging friends from shaded benches in city parks and accessing e-mail as they chomp on Big Macs at McDonald's. These denizens of wireless hot spots are mobile computer users who are demanding and getting wireless broadband Internet access in all the places they frequent�and even in many they don't.

Hot spots are not ubiquitous, but they're chasing a trend that is becoming so. Projected sales data for 802.11 devices show a burgeoning demand for wireless access. Gartner/Dataquest's digital-communications-research analysts estimate that shipments of 802.11-based devices will grow to 26.5 million by the end of 2003, up from 15.5 million in 2002, and that shipments of client devices will top 50 million by 2006.

Hot spots are cropping up at a remarkable rate to meet the connectivity demands of users as they venture out from their homes and offices. Forward Concepts, a market research firm in Tempe, Arizona, projects that the number of hot spots will grow to 530,000 in the U.S., nearly 800,000 in Europe, and more than 1 million in Asia by 2007. By then, hot spots in the U.S. alone will represent an $8 billion industry.

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