Austin Wireless City Project Lights Up Community Network

The Austin Wireless City Project launches today with seven publicly available free wifi hotspots and 500 registered users. The cost to the venues is often free because the volunteer labor and equipment is donated. The Project uses free software and services from Less Networks to provide marketing tools to small businesses, letting them brand and track the service.

Making Cool Places Hot and Hot Places Hotter

AUSTIN (TX) -- (October 23, 2003) -- The Austin Wireless City Project launches today with seven publicly available free wifi hotspots and 500 registered users. The hotspots, located in independently owned businesses and a non-profit organization, are the first to join the Projects volunteer-run community network.

The hotspots include:

•    B.D. Riley's Pub

•    BookPeople

•    Lovejoys Tap Room & Brewery

•    Opal Divine's Freehouse

•    Resistencia Book Store

•    Ruta Maya Coffee Company

•    Ventana Del Soul Cultural Center & Coffee House

The Austin Wireless City Project is a collaboration with the Austin Wireless Group, Less Networks, and several other community-minded organizations," said Dan Vogler, program coordinator of the Austin Wireless Group. Known as the 'Partners in Free WiFi, these companies and organizations are improving the availability and quality of free wifi in Austin."

Started in October 2002, the Austin Wireless City Project deployed its first hotspot last month at the Austin Convention Center for the Austin Game Conference. The Project recorded nearly 500 user sessions over two days. As a result of this free service provided to the appreciative conference attendees, the Project hopes to make this a permanent amenity at the Convention Center. Said Vogler, When visitors come to Austin and discover that the people of Austin are providing them with free wifi access, they leave here with a good feeling about us. They discover that were generous and were technically savvy. They understand why we live here, why Austin has such a good reputation for high-tech and quality of life. It makes them want to come back."

The Project is completely staffed by volunteers. Some of these volunteers are installers called "hotspotters." Hotspotters go to a venue that wants to offer a free wifi service or upgrade its existing service and actually install the equipment necessary for a wireless network. The cost to the venues is often free because the volunteer labor and equipment is donated. Many of the volunteers are wireless industry professionals contributing their time as community service. The volunteers also provide free on-going support and maintenance of the hotspots after they are deployed.

Rich MacKinnon, the founder of the Project, said the organizations objective is to self-provision and self-maintain vast community networks of free wifi hotspots and transform ourselves from consumers of corporate services to co-creators of a technology that better links us to what matters to us."

Beside the free labor, the Project also uses free software and services from Less Networks to provide marketing tools to small businesses, letting them brand and track the service. This is similar to the commercial, for-pay wifi access offered by T-Mobile in large national chains and Wayport in airports.

"By the end of 2002, there were less than 20,000 hotspots globally," said John Yunker, an analyst at Pyramid Research. "The pace of hotspot deployment has quickened over the past three months. We are now on track to see more than 100,000 hotspots deployed by early 2005."

Austin exemplifies this trend," said Jon Lebkowsky of the Project and CEO of Austin-based Polycot, a technology consultency. Eventually, the city will be covered by a wireless quilt, a pervasive patchwork of connectivity."

Partners in Free WiFi participating organizations include Austin Wireless City Project, Austin Wireless Group, Austin Free-Net, EFF-Austin, Hackney Communications, Less Networks, Midas Networks, Polycot, WiFi FreeSpot and WireHead Electronics. For more information, contact Jon Lebkowsky of the Austin Wireless City Project at info@austinwirelesscity.org.

About Austin Wireless City Project

The mission of the Austin Wireless City Project is To EDUCATE, ADVISE,

ENABLE and ASSIST operators of public spaces in providing free wireless

hotspots to ALL residents of Austin and surrounding areas. The website is

http://www.austinwirelesscity.org/. The contact is Jon Lebkowsky at

info@austinwirelesscity.org

About Austin Wireless Group

The mission of the Austin Wireless Group is to bring together like minded folks to discuss and brainstorm on ideas regarding future direction, and network methodology, and set up a fully operational network maintained by and for the community. The website is http://www.austinwireless.net/. The contact is Dan Vogler at dan@wirehead.com

About Less Networks

Less Networks creates downloadable customer-branded Free WiFi hotspots.

Venues own their hotspot and manage it with simple web tools. Hotspot software lets venues communicate with their customers and log usage. Users gain access to all Less Networks hotspots and interact with others logged in from home or other venues.

The website is http://www.lessnetworks.com/. The contact is Rich MacKinnon

at rich@lessnetworks.com

Interested media in this Austin-based movement should contact:

Holt Hackney

Hackney Communications

(512) 632-0854

hhackney@hackneycommunications.com