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The laptop computer is growing into the next cell phone.

It's due to the growth of wireless Internet access.

So-called Wi-Fi hot spots are popping up throughout El Paso and the rest of the nation -- from coffee shops to the El Paso International Airport.

Even entire towns are becoming giant hot spots. Rio Rancho, N.M., on the outskirts of Albuquerque, this month will become the second city in the nation to have citywide wireless Internet access available for homes and businesses.

Some Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity, hot spots are free to use. But a growing number, like the ones at the El Paso airport, have per-minute or per-hour charges or can be used via monthly subscriptions.

"People demand high-speed wireless access wherever they are. The same happened with telephones. Everyone has cell phones now," said Jessica Nuñez, a Dallas-based spokeswoman for SBC Communications.

SBC recently added Barnes & Noble bookstores, including the two in El Paso, to its growing SBC FreedomLink Wi-Fi network, one of the nation's largest Wi-Fi networks with more than 5,000 hot spots.

"I think this definitely will help our business over time. This is a service consumers are increasingly demanding," said Michael Crews, assistant manager of the Barnes & Noble store in East El Paso.

SBC expects to have more than 20,000 hot spots by the end of 2006.

SBC added McDonald's restaurants this year, but none in El Paso offer Wi-Fi yet. Nine UPS Stores in El Paso also are part of the SBC network that people pay to access by the hour, day or month. The monthly charge is $19.95; hourly charges vary. At Barnes & Noble, for example, the charge is $3.95 for two hours.

It's important to have a large network, which SBC is putting together via its own hot spots and via agreements with other Wi-Fi providers, Nuñez said.

Eddie Beck, 44, an El Paso Realtor, regularly uses the free Wi-Fi hot spot at Kristoph's coffee shop on the East Side.

"I do 30 to 40 percent of my business here. This is my (second) office for years," said Beck, who uses Kristoph's wireless Internet access to look up properties for sale and listed on the Internet. "I would pay (for a hot spot) if I had to."

Beck said he also accesses the Internet via Sprint. He said he pays about $80 a month for a Sprint Wi-Fi card that he puts in his laptop and that allows him to get Internet access anywhere.

Juleta Zamudio, new co-owner of Kristoph's, said the free Internet access helps bring in customers. Many customers come in with laptops, she said.

Alan Erickson, 50, who operates Lone Star Investments in El Paso, said he and his wife usually use free hot spots at hotels to access the Internet while traveling.

"It's one of the things you can't live without. Everything is being run out of that laptop," Erickson said.

More than 21 million people have used wireless connections to access the Internet, according to a report released last spring by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Gartner Inc., a global research firm, projects that almost 31 million people will be Wi-Fi users by 2007, Nuñez said.

IDC, another research firm, projects that Wi-Fi hot spots should grow from about 22,000 now to 65,000 by 2008, Nuñez reported.

Wireless connections are not just available at commercial hot spots. They also can be made at home. For example, SBC has more than 1 million customers with high-speed DSL Internet access who have purchased routers to make their homes mini hot spots, Nuñez said.

Pat Abeln, aviation director of the El Paso airport, said, wireless Internet has become "a pretty valuable business tool" that the airport needed to provide.

The airport awarded a contract to Maryland-based Opti-Fi Networks. The company pays the airport 25 percent of its revenues from its El Paso airport system, Abeln said.

Many airports across the nation have been adding wireless connections this year, said Ruth Hough, Opti-Fi acting president. The company has put Wi-Fi systems in 26 airports so far, Hough said. Three to four companies are competing to install Wi-Fi systems in airports, she said.

Putting Wi-Fi in airports has been a slow progression because many airports, which lost a significant revenue source when cell phones supplanted pay phones, were asking for unreasonable revenue shares, Hough said. "Now, airports are getting more reasonable," she said.

For Ottawa Wireless and sister company Azulstar Networks, both based in Grand Haven, Mich., a small resort town that became the first city in the United States with citywide Wi-Fi coverage, the goal is to add more cities.

"Our goal is to do this everywhere, even in large cities," Tyler van Houwelingen, founder and CEO of the companies, said Tuesday from Rio Rancho. "We're interested in (other) areas in New Mexico and this region."

But the next project being looked at is in Grand Rapids, Mich., he said.

Copyright © 2004. El Paso Times.