Has anyone else driven around Buffalo looking for wifi networks. With the price of an access point down to about $20 they are everywhere! Sometime 6 at at time and even in the poorer neighborhoods. I can't believe how easy it is to get access, I can't imagine what it is like in a bigger city. It must make the telcos so angry. The best part is that most of the residents are not very computer savy and haven't even changed their network name from linksys or netgear making it one giant password free "linksys/netgear" network.

My favorite experience was sitting at starbucks on delaware and kenmore next to the t-mobile store. Of course they have the pay as you go t-mobile hotspot, but some resident has a network right there that was free to log in to and just as fast.

Imagine if all phone went wifi and wifi was everywhere. Who would pay for GPRS? Tehre are some sites that have free wifi listings of stores such as but I am thinking about putting together a site mapping buffalo's residential wifi networks and free hotspots. Maybe if I have time next week. Anyone interested in this?

--Paul