Wave of the Future Ellsworth business offers ‘hot spot’ for wireless Internet access

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The shire town of Hancock County is known for its retail services and for being the gateway community to Acadia National Park, but a local company has put Ellsworth on the map for an entirely different reason.

Downeast.Net has created in downtown Ellsworth what its owners say is Maine’s first “hot spot,” a wireless fidelity Internet connection that is accessible to the general public.

Wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, is a radio signal that provides a wireless Internet connection. It allows people with laptop computers equipped with the appropriate software to get a connection to the Internet without having to plug into a phone line or cable.

Ellsworth’s hot spot, or the area in which Downeast.Net’s radio signal can be received, encompasses the Ellsworth Public Library, City Hall parking lot, and other places within roughly 1,000 feet of the signal antenna located on top of Downeast.Net’s downtown office, according to Don McKillop, who owns and operates the Internet service provider with his wife, Jean McKillop.

The hot spot radio signal cannot be picked up inside City Hall because of the building’s brick exterior and copper roof, Don McKillop said, but the wooden construction of the library allows the hot spot’s signal to penetrate its walls.

Recent standardization in the technology, and the fact that Wi-Fi signals are as yet unlicensed by the Federal Communications Commission, have thrust the innovation into the domain of the average consumer. Computers are now being manufactured with built-in Wi-Fi capability, and other electronics likely are not far behind, he said.

Many computer-savvy people nationwide have bought their own Wi-Fi access points, or antennas, and installed them in their homes so they can surf the Web wherever they are most comfortable, whether inside the house or in the yard, according to McKillop.

However, the antenna that emits the Wi-Fi signal must still be connected to an Internet provider by telephone line or cable so the speed of the service being transmitted by the radio signal is limited to the highest speed at which the provider operates.

What Wi-Fi offers is convenience and mobility.

“I can be sitting in the back yard in the shade with a cold beer and a laptop [computer],” McKillop said.

Not only does that kind of mobility make the service appealing, he said, but Downeast.Net’s hot spot service in Ellsworth is faster than the average Internet connection available over a telephone line. That’s because several high-speed wire connections installed at Downeast.Net connect the Wi-Fi hot spot to the Internet.

“This screams,” McKillop said. “Once you have high-speed it’s very hard to go back.”

McKillop envisions a time in the not-too-distant future when even regular household appliances will be monitored from afar. For example, a person who owns a computerized refrigerator within range of a Wi-Fi signal will be able to access his refrigerator over the Internet, scan its contents, and see if he needs to buy milk before heading home from work.

“It’s just spectacular technology,” McKillop said. “It’s innovation, and no matter what you do, innovation is always good.”

He predicted that businesses in the near future will use the technology to monitor machines and other devices. A furnace or air conditioner equipped with Wi-Fi will be monitored from afar by a technician with a computer. Cash registers equipped with Wi-Fi will allow supermarket managers to monitor sales as they occur, he said.

McKillop said he has heard there are hotels in the Portland area that have created Wi-Fi hot spots within their facilities for their guests’ use. But he believes the hot spot in downtown Ellsworth is the first in Maine available to the general public.

McKillop said Downeast.Net has registered with two Internet Web sites that list Wi-Fi hot spots internationally – 802.11hotspots.com and freehotspots.com – and that so far Ellsworth is the only hot spot in Maine listed on those sites.

“We knew it was a good idea,” McKillop said of the technology. “It’s nice to say Ellsworth, Maine, is first.”

Downeast.Net offers the hot spot service free to its members and sells 10 hours of Wi-Fi access for $10 to nonmembers who have to buy the service in person at Downeast.Net’s Ellsworth office.

Anyone with a Wi-Fi-equipped computer who clicks on the Web browser within the Ellsworth hot spot will have Downeast.Net’s Wi-Fi log-in page pop up on the computer. Just as it does with its dial-up service, Downeast.Net requires users of its Wi-Fi hot spot to use a pre-approved password before they can gain access to the Internet, McKillop said.

The cost of providing the service – and therefore the cost of buying it – is relatively inexpensive compared with other types of high-speed Internet connections because there is no wiring to be run and no phone or cable lines for which the consumer has to pay, according to McKillop.

Downeast.Net also offers fixed wireless Internet service, a radio signal that bounces back and forth over several frequencies and is beamed from Downeast.Net directly to a receiver set up at a customer’s home or business. The signal is then transmitted by a wire connected to the customer’s computer.

This service, which is not compatible with Wi-Fi-equipped computers, cost as much as $3,000 to install three years ago, according to McKillop. Installing fixed wireless these days costs between $500 and $1,000, he said.

In comparison, the cost of updating a computer for Wi-Fi use is cheap. Wi-Fi cards, which plug into most computers as easily as a modem card, can be purchased from local retailers for as little as $80, according to McKillop.

The cost of buying a Wi-Fi access point that anyone can set up at home for personal use is roughly $100, according to McKillop. The access point still must be connected to an Internet service provider who will charge a monthly fee.

Roy Atkinson, a computer specialist with Reliable Computers and Consulting in Bangor, is enthusiastic about Downeast.Net’s hot spot and others that may be established in Maine. He said several businesses in Maine have established Wi-Fi signals inside their offices, but Downeast.Net is the first Maine Internet service provider he is aware of that has made the service available to the public.

“I think it’s great. Wherever hot spots exist, they’re terrific,” Atkinson said. “There’s going to be less and less wire as time goes on.”

Wi-Fi technology is ideally suited for travelers or commuters who carry laptops with them, Atkinson said. Many airports and motels around the country offer the service to their customers, and corporations such as McDonald’s and Starbucks have established hot spots in many of their stores in other parts of the country.

Anyone can walk into a Starbucks that offers the Internet service and buy a cup of coffee and an hour or more of access to the store’s Wi-Fi signal, he said.

Atkinson cautioned, however, that Wi-Fi hot spots are not believed to be a secure type of Internet access. Wi-Fi users should make sure the signal is heavily encrypted before they use it to transmit financial information because hackers will be tempted to steal it, he said.

“Whether [the hackers] are successful or not, you’re inviting people to try it,” Atkinson said. “Public hot spots are not a good place to do that.”

The range of hot spots is limited because the Federal Communications Commission regulates the strength of the unlicensed radio signals to prevent undue interference for other Wi-Fi signals, according to McKillop.

Because anyone can use these unlicensed radio signals, the potential for a lot of signals, or hot spots, to be generated is high, McKillop said. The more powerful a Wi-Fi radio signal is, the more interference it creates for other nearby Wi-Fi signals.

“You don’t want to generate a whole lot of interference with the unlicensed radio bands,” McKillop said.

According to Jean McKillop, only the most severe winter weather is likely to have a noticeable effect on the radio signal and the speed of wireless Internet transmissions.

“Excessive icing [on the antenna] would be a problem,” she said.

But the advantages remain appealing and Downeast.Net plans to add another antenna to help widen coverage in downtown Ellsworth, Don McKillop said. Because the hot spot draws Internet users to downtown Ellsworth, he said, other businesses in the area benefit from its presence.

Among the people who have used the service so far, according to McKillop, are a Calais musician who regularly travels to Ellsworth to download music, and a Maine Maritime Academy student who needed to download information quickly before he sailed out of Castine on the State of Maine, the school’s training vessel.

A typical dial-up connection is 26 times slower than the Wi-Fi connection available in Ellsworth, McKillop said. If it takes three minutes to download a three-minute song over the Wi-Fi hot spot, it would take one hour and eighteen minutes to download the same song over a dial-up connection, he said.

As the technology catches on, McKillop said, other accessible hot spots in Maine are sure to follow. He said he has had inquiries from people who would like hot spots established in other parts of Hancock County.

“There’s a lot of interest in Blue Hill. There’s a lot of interest in Bar Harbor. Even officials in the Stonington-Deer Isle area have been in touch with us about it,” McKillop said.

Charlene Clemons, assistant director of Ellsworth Public Library, said people have come into the library with laptop computers specifically to access the Downeast.Net hot spot.

“We’ve had two or three [people] that I know of, and they don’t necessarily tell us they’re doing that,” Clemons said. “I think anytime someone comes in the library who hasn’t been [in] before, we benefit.”

Clemons predicted people from out of state are likely to come to the library during the summer months to use the service.

“Probably a lot more of it is going to be summer people traveling through,” she said.

McKillop and Atkinson agreed the Ellsworth hot spot, and Wi-Fi in general, will have a lot of appeal for tourists or seasonal residents who already are used to having access to high-speed Internet service.

Wi-Fi technology also may encourage more technologically advanced businesses or businesspeople to move to Maine, McKillop said.

“It’s only good for the economic development of the area,” he said.

More information on Downeast.Net is available by calling 667-7414 or visiting the company’s home page on the Web at: www.ellsworthme.com.