MIA Wireless in a Year; Fort Lauderdale Wireless Now

The good news out of Miami International Airport: Workers should have the part of the terminal set up for wireless Internet use by January. The bad news: Airport officials will need a year to hire someone to actually run the system.

That means MIA, notorious for being behind in a variety of airport amenities, would remain mostly offline through 2006 -- an increasingly rare inconvenience inside the nation's major airports. (Though you can log on to the Internet at MIA. Read on.)

The Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport introduced free wireless Internet service, known as Wi-Fi, in January to predictably rave reviews. Use has gone from 14,007 hits in January to 29,169 in August.

An example: Last Thursday, medical-supply consultant Frank LoBianco used Wi-Fi to convert some couches by the Delta desk at the Fort Lauderdale airport into an open-air conference room.

''I did a presentation right over there,'' LoBianco said while checking e-mail on his laptop. He had flown in from Atlanta to meet with clients at the airport. ``I used wireless in my presentation. It worked out well.''

Things aren't nearly as easy at MIA. Though the two new terminals under construction expect to be set up for wireless, the airport only has the funds to retrofit Concourse D with the service, said Patricia Ryan, manager of commercial operations.

She told me the county-run airport expects to have wireless transponders throughout Concourse D by January. But the laborious process of drafting a request-for-proposals to run the service and soliciting bids should take about a year.

''We would love to be able to just turn it on,'' Ryan said. ``But there is a duty and an obligation [to give] everyone a fair chance to participate.''

MIA is much larger than FLL, so it might not be fair to compare the two. But FLL has found little headache in running the Wi-Fi system itself, said Jim Smith, the airport's manager of information systems.

His staff runs the public wireless system, but it only takes up about 5 percent of their time, he said.

''Thank goodness it's one of those things that kind of runs and you forget it's there,'' Smith said.

But here's a little nugget of not-so-bad news. Wireless Internet service is available at MIA, and not just in airlines' VIP lounges. But it's very limited and not cheap.

The Miami International Airport Hotel in Terminal E offers wireless Internet access for anyone willing to pay for it. Thirty minutes of access cost $4.95, plus 25 cents for each additional minute. Twenty-four hours cost $9.95. (I'll do the math for you: If you need more than 50 minutes, pay for the whole day.)

I tried the service recently and was pleasantly surprised by its range. The hotel makes it available at all of its public areas -- meaning you can log on at the seventh-floor restaurant or the sushi bar on the ground floor. But I got a great connection at the nearby food court, where I had access to a wall plug and a Starbucks. (Ryan told me the wireless coverage stretches a bit into concourses G and F as well, but I didn't have a chance to test that.)

I had trouble logging on, but I think that was more my computer's fault than the hotel's. I called the service's help line; a technician was on the line fairly quickly, and I was up and running in about five minutes.

The hotel hands out a flier with all of the log-in information, or you can just clip this column.

The system's homepage is set up to pop on to your screen as soon as you try to log onto the Internet at the airport. You enter your credit-card information on the homepage, so there's no need to go the front desk for anything.

If you need the name of the system, called the SSID, for your computer, it's called ''publicwifi'' (no quotes, all lowercase). And the help line is 877-294-9434.

DEAL WATCH

American Express recently announced changes for its American Airlines corporate card. It used to offer 10 percent discounts on certain American flights. Now it's giving away 4 percent discounts on all American flights.