The New Media Institute has a deal with Athens-Clarke County to have its network boxes on poles around downtown through August 2003. City government is excited about the prospect, although new Mayor Heidi Davison says she was a little bowled over at her first briefing on the technology. "I felt like an interplanetary alien dropped into a new world. I don’t understand it. But I’m fascinated by it," she says. Even if the project doesn’t make money for anyone right away, it could add to "the buzz" in downtown, she adds.

Picking up the tab for the project was the Georgia Research Alliance, an economic development consortium of business, academia and government that invests to nurture Georgia’s technology community and?whenever possible?attract more business to the state. Not even the 15 businesses that are involved in the WAGZone have a clear sense of where this is going, only the notion that wireless will eventually take them somewhere?and it’s better to be on board as the train is pulling out than to try leaping onto a juggernaut.

Still, Cutts at Frontier doesn’t think it is going to change Athens business real soon. "Right now, I think it’s neonatal," he says. But just the buzz is a good idea, he says. "If more people come into downtown, then more people will come into Frontier."