PORTLAND, Ore. - Nigel Ballard spends much of his free time trying to make Internet access free for everybody.

The admittedly cheeky and even a bit geeky Brit fond of wearing a "Got Wi-Fi?" T-shirt is an adviser to the Personal Telco Project, a determined volunteer team of computer wizards setting up free wireless Internet hot zones around Portland - including cafes, bookstores and even city parks.

Their goal is to blanket the city with areas where people can take their laptops and get on the Internet free of charge or make whole neighborhoods Internet accessible from desktop computers.

It's a vision shared by some city government leaders, including Erik Sten, a city commissioner.

They argue the Internet is a basic utility that should be accessible to everyone.

"It has some groundbreaking possibilities for people who are stuck on the wrong side of the 'information society' divide," Sten said.

Ballard would like to see everybody cross that divide.

"I believe that myself and others with communications and technical skills have a certain social and moral imperative to try and redress the imbalance in some small way," Ballard said.

The same concerns are shared in Philadelphia, among the first major cities in the nation to consider ways to cover its entire 135-square-mile metro area with wireless access, according to Dianah Neff, chief spokeswoman for the city and Mayor John F. Street.

Wi-fi - wireless fidelity - is the term applied to a narrow range of frequencies that can be used to transmit computer data over relatively short distances.

Philadelphia already has installed wireless nodes in 150 of its 265 schools with plans for access in all of them.

The hope is to reach most of the nearly 80 percent of the 210,000 public school students whose income is so low they qualify for school lunch programs - and whose families are unlikely to afford Internet access, Neff said.

"I think it's technology that all cities will have, or be left behind," Neff said. "It's a transformational technology if you want to be a 21st century city."

The cost of installation is far cheaper than copper telephone wire, fiber optic lines or cable, but business models to pay for operation and maintenance still have to be worked out, said Julie Ask, a wireless technology analyst with JupiterResearch.

"When it comes to cities like Philadelphia, there have been lots of announcements but there have not been a lot of detailed plans about how they're going to execute wi-fi," Ask said.

Ron Sege, president and CEO of Tropos Networks in Sunnyvale, Calif., said there are three basic business models being followed as cities consider wi-fi networks.

A city will install the network and operate and maintain it for police and fire departments, or city agencies doing field work, such as building inspectors, and then allow public access for a small fee.

The advantage to wireless technology, compared to TV cable companies or telephone companies with high-speed DSL connections over copper wire, installation costs are a major factor.

"At some point, it's all about the dollars," Sege said. "I can build a broadband wi-fi network to cover the entire city of Philadelphia for about $30 per home. To do it with cable or DSL is going to cost 10 to 20 times as much."

The federal agency responsible for overseeing wi-fi network growth is the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a little-known agency of the Commerce Department.

Michael Gallagher, an assistant commerce secretary who is the agency's administrator and chief telecommunications adviser to President Bush, said the president has made it clear he wants the country to have universal access to high-speed, or broadband, Internet connections through some kind of national infrastructure.

Wi-fi is an increasingly important and growing component of Internet access, and Commerce is encouraging as much competition as possible to develop it, Gallagher said.

The growth of a national wi-fi infrastructure, however, likely is to go through "this messy period where all kinds of players are trying to figure out how to use it and how it should be organized," said Christian Sandvig, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor who specializes in telecommunications technology and public policy.

"The impetus is often frustration with the current system," Sandvig said.

"The same way that radio amateurs were interested in doing new things, now people are angry with their cable companies."

In Oregon, Ballard is trying to help the amateurs by sharing more than 15 years of experience in wireless technology, including consulting and design.

His clients have included a long list of major high-tech corporations such as Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, IBM and Intel.

As wireless director for Portland-based Matrix Networks, Ballard manages wireless network installation for a wide range of customers, including colleges, marinas, hotels, convention centers, golf courses and research labs.

The Associated Press