A network of techie idealists is scheming to wreck the for-profit model of wireless Internet access, hoping to instead establish giant public zones where everyone could log on free.

Leaders of the so-called community wireless movement are experimenting with the wireless networking standard called Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity), creating 300-foot "hot spot" access points they hope will one day stretch for miles, even cover cities. If that happened, proponents say, fee-based wireless services catching on in hotels, airports and cafes would become irrelevant.

"There is an 'us' and 'them,' because we're giving it away and they're charging mega, mega bucks for it," said Nigel Ballard, director of wireless for Portland, Ore., hot spot operator Matrix Networks. By day Ballard sets up wireless systems at business class hotels; by night he lobbies the city of Portland to provide free wireless access downtown.

Encouraged by successes in Zamora, Spain (which established the world's first public wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, access), Long Beach, Calif., and New Orleans' historic French Quarter, Ballard and others are trying to establish public wireless access around the United States.

"If you have a Starbucks on one corner and a coffee shop on the other, then what we're doing is devaluing their offering, because wireless doesn't stop at the pavement or the curb," Ballard said. "It goes clean across the road, through the windows and into the Starbucks.

"We're devaluing their service and for that reason they hate us."

Industry leaders don't seem particularly scared, though. Communal hot spots will never be a threat, argues Kim Thompson, spokeswoman for T-Mobile, a wireless carrier that has outfitted more than 2,200 Starbucks.

"A Wi-Fi access point is only good for about 300 feet," she said, so the idea that community Wi-Fi "is going to be built out like a wide-area network is kind of silly. "What happens if you have a really important presentation? Can you jump around and hope to find a hot spot? Who are you going to call? Does your neighbor running the hot spot really care that your presentation didn't get downloaded?"

And unless it comes up with a way to secure patent or proprietary rights, the community wireless movement's influence will wane, industry analysts predict.

"Manufacturers and service providers are happy to sit back and listen for now, while these essentially experimental installations reveal more and more about what the market is, what the usage patterns are, what the perceived value on the part of users is like," says Jonathan Liebenau, a visiting professor of engineering management at Columbia University's business school.

But by teaming up with municipalities to use public parks and other open spaces, community wireless groups have made headway. In Long Beach, Calif., for example, free hot spots cover the local airport, convention center, marina and downtown's restaurant row.

"I've spoken to officials in Arizona, Washington, Florida and Ohio, and they're all interested in what we're doing here," said Lorenzo Gigliotti of G-site Web & Consulting, one of the project's local private sector partners. "All the parties -- the city, local businesses, and the users -- have all benefited to some degree."

The idealists and corporate types need each other, experts believe.

The technology is still in its infancy, and manufacturers and software companies are interested in gaining access to the ideas generated in community wireless forums, said Anthony Townsend, co-founder of free Wi-Fi network provider NYCwireless.

And the community wireless movement needs industry's technical know how. Vivato, manufacturer of the first Wi-Fi switch, has teamed up with NYCwireless to create a wireless cloud over New York City's Central Park. Four outdoor switches would extend a wireless signal that could cover the 843-acre park; in fact, it could reach as far as four miles.

"You and I can use this without going to a government," Vivato's John Richey told a meeting of 150 rapt NYCwireless members. "We don't ever have to buy a license for this."

For Townsend, the technology represents freedom to communicate.

"There's something inherently revolutionary and inherently grass roots about it, because it circumvents all these private spaces that are very heavily controlled and owned," says Townsend of the wireless spectrum band, which at present is unlicensed and unregulated.

Wireless enthusiasts such as Jeff Pulver, an Internet telephone developer, see Wi-Fi as the start of something bigger: a set of "open spectrum" technologies that will deregulate the airwaves and lead to competition and innovation.

"What I'm hoping for with the advent of the Internet and open communications is that cool new services and ways to communicate will start to happen at a rate much faster than we've ever seen before in history," Pulver said. "We'll have true end user empowerment."

In Portland, Ballard says he's getting closer to his goal of deploying a citywide wireless cloud. "My pitch to the city is we need employers and people outside of this area to reconsider Portland," said Ballard of a city that has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the United States.

"People in other states and cities will read about it and will say 'you know, we should really look again at Portland. They're doing some cool stuff there."'