ESCONDIDO - Coming soon to a downtown bench, cafe or business near you: free wireless Internet, courtesy of the city of Escondido.

Beginning next month, Escondido will begin offering high-speed Wi-Fi service in the city's core at no cost to the public, joining the ranks of urban metropolises such as San Francisco and Philadelphia that have offered similar services to their communities.

Escondido will also be the first North County city to provide the free amenity to anyone with a laptop or other wireless device.

Steve Abat, the city's network manager, said the main benefit the free wireless will provide is boosting economic development.

"It's an obvious place for (Wi-Fi) to go, and we felt it would benefit the businesses most if we put it in the downtown area," Abat said.

Access will be available in an area spanning the historic downtown and civic center. From west to east, coverage will run from Escondido Boulevard to Broadway and from north to south from Valley Parkway to Grand Avenue. The signal will reach beyond the roughly six-block area, but degrade as users move away from downtown.

The system will run on six routers provided free of charge to the city by Sensoria, which manufactured the $18,000 in networking devices. The routers will be linked to a DSL connection at City Hall, which will maintain the system.

Dave Gelvin, president and chief executive officer of Sensoria, said the Rancho Bernardo-based company chose Escondido because it wanted to install a nearby system that could be used to demonstrate its services to potential clients.

"Our main (business) model is not to give away our equipment for free," said Gelvin, adding that the company also has Wi-Fi accounts with cities such as Palo Alto, as well as the University of the Virgin Islands.

This month, Cal State San Marcos also began offering free wireless connections on its 304-acre campus using Sensoria equipment.

Around downtown, the necessary equipment is already installed atop a half-dozen light poles, and the city hopes to open the connection up to the public sometime in October. Escondido will pay a monthly fee of about $70 for the DSL connection that will allow users to access basic Web functions, such as e-mail and Internet searches.

"It's probably not a good gamers' connection," Abat said of the 700/kilobyte per second connection.

The city will shut down the connection every day, most likely in the early morning hours, to prevent hackers exploiting the system, Abat said.

A smaller wireless connection has been in place at the city's main library for a couple of years and has proved very popular.

Adding wireless connectivity to the rest of downtown is welcome news to Debra Rosen, chief executive officer of the Downtown Business Association.

Giving local businesses and patrons the power to check their e-mail and perform other Web-based tasks will only help burnish the city's image as a force to be reckoned with, she said.

Temecula recently added a similar free Wi-Fi access and some other North County cities, such as Encinitas, offer wireless access, but not for free.

"This is going to make us more competitive," Rosen said. "More competitive for visitors, for businesses and for residents, because nobody else has (this service) up here."

Contact staff writer David Fried at (760) 740-5416 or dfried@nctimes.com.