Wireless Wealth The Wi-Fi revolution is coming. Find out how your business can get in on the ground floor and rope in profits.

If you've been watching the technology industry at all lately, you've likely heard the word "Wi-Fi." Over the past two years, it has quickly moved from a relatively obscure technology in the land of network administrators to one of the hottest growth opportunities in the tech sector.

Wi-Fi is fast becoming the industry standard for wireless networking and is being used in homes and businesses to untether the network and provide more flexibility. In public spaces, Wi-Fi provides consumers and business travelers with wireless Internet access at broadband speeds. Wi-Fi adoption is accelerating as manufacturers such as Dell, HP, Intel, Sony, Toshiba and others are equipping laptops, PDAs and other electronic devices for wireless network connections. There are already millions of devices--in a variety of different styles and formats--looking for Wi-Fi networks to latch on to.

While the use of Wi-Fi in homes and offices is skyrocketing--to the delight of equipment manufacturers--there also are broad-based entrepreneurial opportunities providing wireless Internet access in public spaces. Because it complements their main lines of business, established and well-financed companies like AT&T, IBM, Intel, T-Mobile and Toshiba have various partnerships and plans to install tens of thousands of "hot spots" (public Wi-Fi locations) across the country--and perhaps hundreds of thousands around the globe. But the key link in that value chain will inevitably be the small to midsized businesses that already own the venues where this service can be provided.