The 100,000 mark "is a unique milestone that shows Wi-Fi has taken root," Blumenfeld said, noting that Wi-Fi hot spots have been around only for four years. "It's still early."

He predicted that hot spots and wide-area broadband cards will coexist for some time as a means to access the Internet wirelessly. As long as carriers charge up to $60 per month for wireless broadband access, users will seek other alternatives, he said.

Some hot spots have been dropped from the list that JiWire keeps, mainly because the entity running the network has gone out of business, Blumenfeld said. JiWire counts a hot spot as a geographical area over which a network runs, but that single network might serve multiple access providers.

The hot spots in the latest survey, which is updated weekly, are dominated by hotels (26,330) and restaurants (19,653). Cafes are a separate category, with 13,815, and are nearly tied with stores and shopping malls, at 13,827. Pubs make up 6,285, while all other locations total 20,445.

JiWire does not have an accurate count of hot spots provided by municipalities -- usually for free -- but Blumenfeld estimated that 30 are up and running and hundreds are being implemented.