Valley businesses use Wi-Fi to lure customers

With laptop computers and smart phones increasingly becoming basic appendages for many people, businesses and cities are scrambling to offer more ways to access the Internet for free.

Dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of sites in the Valley — coffee houses, restaurants, hotels, bookstores, libraries and even cities — now offer free Wi-Fi, or wireless Internet access, as a convenience to customers.

“There’s no doubt, our business has picked up since we started free Wi-Fi,” said Paige LaMattina, a barista at The Revue, a cafe in Fresno’s Tower District. “We’ve had it for maybe three years, and there are a lot of people who use it.”

Nationally, free Wi-Fi got a huge shot in the arm when fast-food giant McDonald’s stopped charging for Internet access at about 11,500 of its U.S. restaurants.

McDonald’s move Jan. 15 instantly added 57 free Wi-Fi hot spots in Fresno, Madera, Tulare and Kings counties where customers can check e-mail, browse the Web or update their Facebook status while sipping coffee, munching a snack or just sitting around.

It also opens a second front in a premium-coffee war between the Golden Arches and Starbucks — a battle for the hearts, stomachs and keyboards of customers. Starbucks has 54 coffee shops in the four-county region that offer Wi-Fi.

Industry analysts and customers alike suggest free wireless access is becoming so common at some types of businesses that those who don’t offer it are likely to find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

Increasingly, “people not only expect Wi-Fi, but they expect it to be free,” said Frank Dickson, vice president of research for In-Stat, an Internet industry research firm in Arizona.

Dickson said he believes competition will continue to spread Wi-Fi beyond coffeehouses and hotels into more types of venues, including shopping malls, airports and bus stations. “You have to think of places where people are compelled to sit and wait,” he said.

Another industry researcher, Philip Solis of ABI Research in New York, said Wi-Fi is a way for all kinds of businesses to increase their value to customers.

Solis estimated there are about 90,000 commercial Wi-Fi hot spots in the U.S. About 10,000 of them are in California.

And to a growing degree, more customers see Wi-Fi as a make-or-break factor in deciding which businesses to patronize when they want or need to be connected away from home.

“It’s definitely important to me,” said Edward Rodriguez, a Fresno real-estate agent who was working on his laptop computer in a booth at The Revue. “As more places offer Wi-Fi, it makes it easier for me to be mobile. I figure out where the hot spots are, and it really dictates where I go.”

Cellular phone companies offer Internet access in their coverage areas. But that access can be slow and expensive compared to Wi-Fi, analyst Dickson said.

“I have a Blackberry, and that’s fine for checking e-mail and simple messages,” Dickson said. “But when I go to do something serious, I start looking for Wi-Fi because the bandwidth difference is significant.”

Businesses aren’t the only ones using Wi-Fi to attract people. More than 350 cities and counties across the country — including Fresno and Clovis — have dipped their toes into the wireless waters offering free access to residents.

Free Wi-Fi service offered in Clovis for a little more than a year covers several blocks of Pollasky Avenue in the city’s Old Town district.

“We wanted to have something downtown where people at events could have Internet access” and to increase business, said Assistant City Manager John Holt. Some Old Town merchants have actively promoted its availability to customers, Holt said, and it continues to grow in popularity.

By Tim Sheehan / The Fresno Bee