In a bid to spur economic development in its downtown area, the city of Springfield, Mo., has set up a free Wi-Fi network using four BelAir 200 multiswitch service routers. The project was announced here in New Orleans by Kanata, Ontario-based BelAir Networks Inc. at this week"s CTIA Wireless 2005 event.

The US$70,000 project, while modest in comparison with Wi-Fi hot zones now under development in cities such as Philadelphia, has been launched with no opposition -- even from the predominant service provider, SBC Communications Inc., according to Dan Brewer, product and services manager for SpringNet in Springfield. SpringNet is a division of the municipal utility in charge of broadband services.

Service providers in many U.S. cities are concerned that the addition of new, free hot spots and hot zones, underwritten and pushed by municipalities, could undercut their broadband services revenues.

"We were expecting to be cut down at the knees by opponents, but were not," Brewer said in a telephone interview, noting that he and others in the city put together a "very careful" campaign to make sure the service was not a direct threat to services offered by SBC or other providers. Part of what makes the Wi-Fi service acceptable to SBC is that users only get one hour of free access, and they are primarily transient students.

The service was launched March 7 at a city ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Brewer said he had compared the gear offered by BelAir with that from Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Tropos Networks, which already has Wi-Fi hot zones in 125 cities, and several other very small wireless players. Springfield went with the BelAir gear because it found the hardware more flexible and potentially expandable to other network protocols in the future.

The four BelAir 200 routers hang from light poles in the downtown and serve roughly a six-square-block area. In the week since it launched, the service has already attracted use by college students, a prime audience for the project, Brewer said.