I am perched on the steps underneath the statue of Eros in London's Piccadilly. In my hands is a laptop, which has just fired up Internet Explorer. Yet I have no wired connection and my mobile phone ran out of battery juice hours ago.

I am one of the first consumers to log on to the new Wi-Fi zone that encompasses much of Piccadilly. Developed by Broadreach Systems, it is now possible for anyone with a Wi-Fi (802.11b or 802.11g)-equipped laptop or personal digital assistant to get on to the network and check email or surf the web in the open space around Piccadilly or, indeed, in any of its buildings. The service, which will take in Leicester Square next month, is free until Christmas. Thereafter, it will cost in the region of £1 for 20 minutes' access.

"So many companies have talked up Wi-Fi zones but not followed through," says Broadreach's chief executive Magnus McEwen King. "We just wanted to show everyone it could be done."

Technically, setting up a Wi-Fi zone isn't that difficult. In its most basic form, it is about daisy chaining a series of wireless access points across an area. "Piccadilly was fairly easy for us," explains McEwen King. "We already have Wi-Fi hot spots in buildings like Tower Records and so it was just a matter of connecting them to offer seamless coverage."

McEwen King hopes the Piccadilly experiment will inspire others to consider applications that can be developed for Wi-Fi zones. "The service in Piccadilly is a vanilla one. For business users, we can offer more bandwidth and extra functionality. We imagine Wi-Fi could appeal to local authorities who can use it to monitor the activities of its mobile workforce."

Although it is the biggest of its kind in London, Piccadilly is not the first Wi-Fi zone in the capital. A few weeks back, an internet cafe group called Reload delivered its Wi-Fi zone, which has a reach from Paddington's railway station to the northern fringes of Hyde Park.

Last year, the Paris business district of La Defense was swathed in a Wi-Fi zone that runs over three square miles, while the town of Zamora, in Spain, is one large Wi-Fi zone.

Yet of all European cities, it is London that is best placed to develop Wi-Fi zones. "I believe Wi-Fi zones could be established across all the major business areas of the capital in around three or four years," says Andrew Greenhalgh, Intel's director of marketing mobile solutions for Europe, Middle East, Africa. "The growth of Wi-Fi hot spots in the city (there are now more than 200) has been astonishing and there is potential for companies to build Wi-Fi zones from the ground up."

"The opportunities for these type of zones exist because the 2.4Ghz radio frequency Wi-Fi operates in is unlicensed and at the moment we are following EU regulations which are very light," says Trevor Brignall, director of business development at Cap Gemini, Ernst and Young.

With that radio space up for grabs, several innovative companies have already begun developing Wi-Fi zones in British towns and cities. Some are in unlikely places, too. MyZones has developed a private zone in the Yorkshire community of Hebden Bridge, while HP Labs has been experimenting with a zone that takes in much of Bristol's city centre.

Clive Mayhew Begg, chief executive of MyZones, also has plans for another big conurbation. "We are looking at setting up a Wi-Fi zone in central Manchester. The key to this will be the licensing of a new antenna developed by a company called Vivato. When this gets the go-ahead, it will give us a reach of four square miles across the centre of the city."

One of the most ambitious is the zone created in the Berkshire town of Newbury by two local companies, FDM Broadband and Twangnet. "The zone, which is free at the moment, encompasses the conference centre, business park and high street," explains FDM's chief executive Karl Crossman.

Coming next year are key technologies that will make setting up Wi-Fi zones much simpler.

"Companies are getting very ex cited about mesh technologies like WiMax," adds Trevor Brignall. WiMax is an industry coalition whose members advance IEEE 802.16 standards for broadband wireless access networks. "WiMax has a range of around 30 miles. It allows Wi-Fi signals to hop across various access points until it hits the network, which makes it ideal for large Wi-Fi areas," he says.

In particular, it could help bring broadband internet access to rural areas where it is not economically feasible to create a wired network.

There are also schemes in the UK that use elements of mesh technology to distribute Wi-Fi signals across large areas. Among these is an area of around 40 square miles surrounding the town of Galashiels in the Scottish borders where MMT Wireless is rolling out Wi-Fi coverage. Similar schemes are also in progress in the southernmost tip of Cornwall and in parts of Wales and Ireland.

Mohammad Shakouri, vice-president of WiMax, sees real opportunities for the technology in the developing world. "In areas of the world with no broadband, setting up WiMax systems is an obvious move. The reach of WiMax is large and the equipment inexpensive."

WiMax might also do much more than enable web-related businesses to spring up in rural, locations. "In rural areas of India there have already been cases where being able to access a person's medical records or accessing specialist information over the internet has saved lives," adds Pankaj Patel a director in Convergys' (customer care solutions provider) office of technology.

There are issues surrounding Wi-Fi zones that have yet to be resolved. "Security is a big one," says Brignall. "People will inevitably be using Wi-Fi to access company intranets, so companies are now looking at random security codes that change frequently to offer more security."

Another key issue is the impact Wi-Fi might have on the fortunes of 3G phone networks, for in certain sectors they are offering the same service - speedy access to data. Many commentators now feel that mobile phone networks see Wi-Fi hot spots and zones as an opportunity rather than a threat. Brian Marshall, European telecommunications business development director of telecoms consultancy AMS, argues: "Wi-Fi will never have the same widespread coverage of 3G, and people aren't going to wait to arrive in a zone before they read email or access the internet. There might be some degree of convergence with 3G/Wi-Fi handsets, but for data applications, 3G will establish itself as the key source."

A more pertinent issue is the limited number of people who have used Wi-Fi hot spots. Tony Crabtree, a senior analyst at Juniper Research, remains optimistic. "In the UK we now have a growing number of hot spots. There will also be more and more devices with integrated Wi-Fi. What we need to see is companies sorting out roaming agreements and marketing the services."

Links

Broadreach
www.readytosurf.com

Reload
www.reload.com

My Zones
www.myzones.co.uk

Twangnet
www.twangnet.com

FDM Broadband
www.fdmbroadband.com

MMT Wireless
www.mmt.co.uk

Intel hotspot guide
intel.jiwire.com