By MICHAEL HINKELMAN

ESME VOS knows wireless cities. She lives in one - Amsterdam, and she runs a Web site devoted to them: .

"I thought cities needed to have one place on the Internet where they could find out what other cities were doing," said Vos, an intellectual-property lawyer by trade.

She's in Philadelphia to chair a panel today at the ongoing Digital Cities Convention - three days devoted to talk of high-speed municipal Internet access.

Since Philly has announced plans to spend more than $10 million to turn the entire city into a wireless hot spot by summer 2006, we caught up with her to ask about Wireless Philadelphia and the future of municipal Wi-Fi.

Q: You've had a chance to read Wireless Philadelphia's business plan. What do you think? Are we going about it the right way?

A: I think the plan is quite sound. The use of a nonprofit organization between the city and the Internet service providers means the city itself will not be delivering Internet access. That is the model a lot of cities, particularly in Europe and Japan, are following. It is quite rare for the city to act as an ISP, except in instances where there is no high-speed access or where the city is small.

It's a model that promotes many service providers who compete with one another, and that's why the EU and Japan are way ahead of the U.S. in broadband access and you get more speed for less money. That's what we have in Amsterdam.

Q: And so how does it work for consumers in Amsterdam?

A: There are dozens of ISPs and the competition is absolutely murderous, but that's good for the consumer, and that's what Philadelphia is trying to do. I get broadband in Amsterdam for the same amount of money my friends in California pay, only my connection is 15 times faster, and the prices keep dropping.

I can do videoconferencing with four or five people all over the world. It makes me more efficient. I can run muniwireless in my pajamas.

Q: So how would a municipal wireless network make Philadelphia more attractive to businesses? Is it just another bell and whistle, or is there more to it?

A: If you have an always-on broadband connection where anybody can connect to the Internet everywhere in the city, that's very important because it decreases the cost of delivering government services, allowing them to pass on the savings in the form of lower taxes.

The second thing is, it makes people more efficient. And, wireless is a cheap way to bring broadband to an area quickly.

And when you have that, you allow businesses there that need fast access to the Internet - design firms, what I call higher-level services, that are now being outsourced to Korea, Japan and Singapore - you can actually keep them here.

Q: If we build this network, then what happens in a couple of years when newer technology, like WiMax, comes along?

A: All of our laptops today and computers have Wi-Fi cards and the Wi-Fi chip. Intel has just released the WiMax chip but it is very expensive and it always takes a long time before these chips get really cheap so they are baked into our laptops. That's just not going to happen anytime soon.

Q: We just learned that a local firm is relocating a call center from here to South Carolina. The stated reason: lower labor costs and lower taxes. Would a wireless muni network be as big a force for economic development as its proponents claim - or do we actually need other policy changes?

A: Well, let's think about that. We already mentioned that government could save money by delivering services more efficiently. Businesses themselves will save because their own telecommunications costs will be lower. The third thing is, what are you losing if you don't upgrade your own infrastructure? I mean,

you're not keeping up with Bangalore [India] and Korea. They're moving ahead, but you're just stuck here.

You will never compete on lower labor costs. However, by having a municipal Wi-Fi network that's always on everywhere, you are now developing a new set of services, maybe new kinds of businesses, new kinds of software and interactions that people can have.

Q: So you're talking about something here that could potentially transform the city?

A: Absolutely, just like cell phones have transformed the way people work and the way they organize their work lives.

That's what I mean by you have to always keep ahead, to keep up your infrastructure to allow you to develop high-level services that people are going to pay for, keeping ahead of the curve.

Q: Health care is a major industry here. We also have an aging population. How can an always-on wireless network, say, advance health care for seniors?

A: I have seen trials in the Netherlands with old people who have a history of heart disease, who wear necklaces that can send out a wireless signal if something has happened to that person. That allows these people to have a more active life; they're not tied to their houses or their nurses. But it also allows doctors to monitor these patients easily. If something happens and they drop suddenly, an ambulance is called and the patient is
immediately helped.

That's what I call pro-active medicine, and that's the kind of thing that's happening right now.

© 2005 Philadelphia Daily News and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.