WiFi has been an internet industry buzzword for a few years. Only now has the rapidly growing array of wireless internet services on offer begun to have a serious impact on the options open for businesses when choosing their access point to the internet.

WiFi has usually involved a business or a home user signing up to a cable or telephone line-based broadband internet service and then plugging a wireless router into their broadband modem. The router then broadcasts the internet connection to any PC or laptop that has a wireless adapter and, hey presto!, you can access the internet for anywhere within a 100-metre range.

The fact is, though, that most homes and even offices are not that big. Certain cheapskates (or shall we say enterprising individuals?) hit on the idea of simply tapping into their neighbours' wireless networks to access the internet completely free. It is a remarkably easy thing to do.

When I went to my sister's house to help her instal her wireless network, we actually found four different wireless networks that were being operated by various neighbours in her row of terraced housing. Being an honest chap, I advised my sister of the moral implications of hooking into their networks, particularly if their connection bills them based on the volume of data they download from the internet. However, many others may not be so honest: the subject of hooking up to your neighbour's network was even been discussed in The Times's ethics section.

Some streets have even decided to club together, and have purchased a single internet account and hooked up a series of wireless routers and receivers to allow all the householders to access the web, thus sharing the cost. Using password access, it is even possible to block out those neighbours who don't pay to be part of the the network, although this does take a small amount of technical know how.

It was all only a matter of time before people started to turn this idea into a money-making scheme, and now a company called HotSpot has opened up a trial service in Amsterdam with wifi connections throughout the city. This allows home and business users to log on wherever they are in the city, and and even use wifi connected VoIP (voice over internet) telephones. Thus, even subscribers' mobile phones have been rendered redundant, as the network allows them to connect to the Skype network for free calls to one another.

The wifi revolution finally came to London earlier this year, with a local authority-funded scheme in the trendy borough of Islington. There, the council installed what is dubbed as "Technology Mile", where residents and businesses who are based near Upper Street can access the net for free as long as they purchase a wifi adapter (which cost around £10).

The council even donated PCs and other equipment to small businesses to assit them in getting online and saving the council time and money by allowing them to locate information and complete routine forms via their website.

A company called Free-Hotspot.com has sought to expand this kind of service across the capital by offering free wifi access in cafes and other public places such as hospitals in exchange for customers being shown a 20-second advert at regular intervals. Unlike the Islington scheme, this will not extend to use in homes or offices.

However, these free services have been supplemented by Now, a commercial service across Islington and into neighbouring Hackney and Camden, offering broadband wifi access from £10 (although it costs £18 for a 1Mpbs service, which is increasingly the standard with the advent of video streaming).

For SMEs, the move to a wifi service provider (ISP) can be a liberating experience. For starters, you lose the need for wiring, which can either be unsightly or expensive to hide. It also allows a modular approach to networking. When you grow, you simply need a new laptop and a new wifi adaptor, which could either operate from your main account or through an individual account on a month-by-month basis. If you downsize, you just switch off the computer and you won't pay anything next month.

Eventually a wifi network will cover much of Britain. Now, there are licences for 15 networks across the country and more will be rolling out based on the success of the London experiments.

If we move towards a level of penetration similar to Amsterdam's, then we too could ditch our mobile phones and opt for a VoIP-PDA-wifi hybrid offering us free calls to fellow users and greatly reduced costs for calls to landlines and abroad. Then, perhaps, we'd really be able get the internet on the move rather than the particularly disappointing services we get from the current 3G networks.

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