Comcast setting out on the WiFi market

Among the civic projects that didn't live up to the hype was Wireless Philadelphia, an endeavor under the John F. Street administration to transform the city into one big WiFi hot spot.

EarthLink Inc., the city's network operator, sold the business before it was fully operational, and the project faded into obscurity.

Now facing a slew of threats from mobile devices, Comcast Corp. has dusted off the WiFi wireless concept for its Philadelphia-area Internet customers - and maybe many others if it works.

It has built about 2,000 hot spots where Comcast Internet customers can log onto the Internet in public spaces around the Philadelphia region, parts of New Jersey, and northern Delaware.

Comcast disclosed Friday that the hot spots were already running and that it expected to wire an additional 1,000 spots during the next several months. Based on its experience here, the nation's largest cable TV company could export the WiFi service to its customers in other Comcast cities.

The WiFi service is free to Xfinity broadband customers who own WiFi-enabled iPads, iPhones, and BlackBerry and other devices and use them outside the home. Comcast also has signed "roaming agreements" with cable companies Cablevision Systems Corp. and Time Warner Cable Inc., which have thousands of WiFi hot spots in the New York City area.

That way, Philadelphia-area customers who travel to New York can use those hot spots operated by Cablevision and Time Warner Cable. Meanwhile, customers of the two New York cable companies can use Comcast's WiFi hot spots when they travel to Philadelphia.

Kenny Jahng, a blogger who runs the technology consulting firm Big Click Syndicate L.L.C., heard about the WiFi network at a business meeting and then went outside and found hot spots all over his town in Short Hills, N.J.

Stunned at how prevalent the service was, Jahng produced a video posted on YouTube explaining the service and demonstrating it at a Short Hills park. "Comcast really doesn't advertise it, and I think they should," he said Friday.

Alex Spektor, a senior analyst for Strategy Analytics Inc., said the WiFi service was faster than traditional 3G cell phone service and noted that U.S. consumers will purchase 55 million WiFi-enabled cell phones this year.

A downside to WiFi is that it works only within a limited geographic area.

Spektor, Jahng, and Comcast officials note that consumers with iPhones can use the Comcast WiFi hot spots and avoid running up usage capacity on the AT&T network.

"The world is going a lot more mobile," said Cathy Avgiris, a Comcast executive showing her WiFi-enabled iPad in the public restaurant area below the Comcast headquarters in Center City. "I joked that we always had to say 'goodbye' to customers when they left the front door. Now we don't have to."

Comcast did not announce the wireless network until it reached a certain capacity with hot spots, she said.

Comcast has not disclosed how much it is spending on the project, but company officials say it is not material to its financial results. Avgiris, a senior vice president and general manager of communications and data services, said Comcast could place WiFi equipment on its existing cable lines running along telephone poles or underground. "They don't add a lot of weight, and they don't use a lot of electricity," she said.

One major issue has been where to place the hot spots so that Xfinity customers will get the most use of them. Avgiris said Comcast surveyed thousands of employees - a process one Comcast official called "crowdsourcing" - to locate potential spots.

So far, Comcast has wired city shopping districts, train stations, parts of the Jersey Shore, and suburban ball fields.

Specific locations include the Albert Einstein Medical Center, Arcadia University, Glenside Park, Chestnut Hill Hospital, Lankenau Hospital, Villanova University, Swedesford Plaza Shopping Center in Berwyn, Willow Grove Naval Air Station, the South Street shopping district in Philadelphia, Cooper University Hospital, and Snyder Memorial Field in Hamilton, N.J.

Comcast customers can see a map of WiFi locations at http://www.comcast.com/wifi. Xfinity customers with WiFi-enabled devices can use the service when they see xfinitywifi as an available wireless network. They then access the network with their Comcast.net e-mail and password.

"We are beginning," Avgiris said, "to take our services outside the home."