You’re lucky if you live in the top five unwired cities in America. I’m talking, of course, about widespread Wi-Fi access, free of charge. Once a simple luxury, the Internet is now being considered a staple of modern society, ranking up there (to some) with food, water and shelter.

(In fact, pretty soon someone’s going to have to update Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It may be debated where free wireless access should go in that diagram: at the bottom as a physiological need, or maybe even a safety or social need. I guess it all depends on how you use the Internet.)

The top most “unwired” cities happen to be Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, Portland and Atlanta. Seattle, of course, blossomed as an early haven of Wi-Fi access, and is home to Starbucks and the “hot spot” coffeehouse concept. San Francisco has an initiative called TechConnect, which will offer open access to every San Franciscan with a mobile device. Austin, Texas, was the purveyor of wireless Internet “of the people, by the people, and for the people” and is actually home to the Texas Wireless Symposium, which every year highlights the city’s growing tech innovations.

The Unwire Portland project is actually a work in progress between both public and private companies to offer its citizens free Wi-Fi service. In fact, 70% of Portland International Airport is unwired and capable of providing a free online connection to travelers and employees alike. Atlanta, interestingly enough, introduced its Atlanta Fast-Pass Wi-Fi initiative as far back as 2003, long before anyone seriously considered blanketing a city with a free wireless connection.

These cities are all early adopters, and are essentially testing zones for large and small corporations to test out their processes of unwiring the country.

In Maryland, we don’t have to travel far to see the “unwired” phenomenon in full force. About 45 minutes out of TFN’s very own Baltimore, Annapolis, Md., (our capital, of course) is a fully wired city. A local company, aptly named Annapolis Wireless, offered up the metropolis as a wireless hot spot in early 2006. You couldn’t even guess how forward-looking the city actually is if you visited historic Annapolis, with its Colonial cobblestone streets and homegrown boutique shops. As an aside, Annapolis was just voted by National Geographic Adventure magazine as one of America’s best waterfront towns.

While Philadelphia, Houston and New Orleans offer free wireless opportunities, they do so using taxpayer dollars. Annapolis Wireless, on the other hand, offered up sponsorships and advertising opportunities on its Web site, which pays for the project in aggregate.

Nortel Networks Corp. (NT:NYSE) is a huge partner with Annapolis Wireless, and also enabled the small private company to give Annapolitans the luxury of being connected everywhere they go in the waterfront town.

Too bad NT didn’t offer to help Chicago out. The windy city just announced today that it’s scrapping its entire plan to Wi-Fi the city. The chief information officer of Chicago stated that the plan to offer unlimited wireless broadband to the city of almost 3 million people would be too costly… and not many people would use it anyway. (Which I find hard to believe!)

Chicago had been working with a few private firms, including EarthLink Inc., to blanket the city with broadband wireless. But the amount of public financing it would take proved to be too daunting, especially since Chicago had originally only planned to pay for the wireless infrastructure needed to get everything moving.

Although Wi-Fi isn’t going to become a reality for Chicago, but the city will become one of the first three in America to offer Wi-Max, which stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. Essentially, Wi-Max connects hotspots to each other through point-to-point access. It’s considered the “last mile” of wireless infrastructure as an alternative to cable and DSL. This differs from regular Wi-Fi, which is used to create a local area network, or LAN, which allows users within the network to connect to the Internet through fixed cables. Wi-Max uses transmitters, like cellphone towers and covers a lot more ground.

Wi-Fi and Wi-Max are competitors with each other, but at this juncture, Wi-Max is much more expensive to set up.

Currently, Nortel is one of the leaders of Wi-Max, which is considered the fourth generation of wireless capability. Currently working on its fourth-generation plan to pave the way as a leader in Wi-Max innovation, it’s starting widespread trials of the technology over the course of the next six to 12 months. NT expects to see commercial deployment of the technology starting in 2010.

NT offers a great opportunity for those of you looking to invest in the next generation of wireless technology. The stock is currently consolidating right under $18 per share, but is pulling out of oversold RSI and rising up significantly in Money Flow. NT is currently a mid-cap company of more than $7 billion.

At its low price point today, it might be worth taking a look at… as a very, very long-term investment, mind you.

I truly believe that wireless connectivity, available to everyone, is a right in our modern world.

But I’d be interested to hear what you think. Do you live in an “unwired” city? Do you think blanketing entire cities with the invisible network is a given right in our country, and do you believe it should be paid for by taxpayer dollars or by the companies giving the contracts?

Are there any wireless companies you have been researching as viable investment picks for the coming years… or do you already own some?

Join the conversation. Drop me a line at e-news@taipanfinancialnews.com with the subject line “Unwired” and I’ll include your letter in one of the next American Capitalist communiqués.

Until then, please enjoy your extended Labor Day weekend.

Ann

 

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