Imagine living in a town where you’re able to move your laptop from one place to the next without ever having to log off from cyberspace. You can leave a coffee shop, travel down to the beach and then over to a park, all the while still surfing the Internet, free of charge.

Hermosa Beach just might be that city if a proposal led by Mayor Michael Keegan to make the tiny beach community completely wireless comes to fruition. The completed plan would make Hermosa Beach famous as the first Wi-Fi city in the United States.

“If it’s successful, I think it will be a model for the rest of the country,” said Keegan. “It will be the first service that we know of, run entirely by a municipality.”

Keegan hopes to formally introduce the proposal to his colleagues on the City Council this month. If the municipality votes to approve the project, the San Diego-based firm, Wireless Facilities Inc., will then install antennae towers in town.

“It’s WFI’s first contract with a city so I told it to take it easy on us in terms of price since this is a way for this company to get all of the bugs out before committing to a city like Los Angeles,” noted Keegan. “They knew with a city like Hermosa Beach they would be able get the best input from a smaller city council.”

WFI’s installation could begin as early as September with the first two towers, one located at City Hall and the other possibly on the lifeguard headquarters next to the city’s municipal pier.

The service, free of charge to users, would provide online access to people in their homes or anywhere just as long as they possess the right devices such as an Internet slot card or a USB port antenna. Newer models made by Dell, Apple and other major computer firms, already have the chip installed in the computers.

“You’ll be able to tap into the service anywhere. Whether you’re in a home, the alley, a park, the beach or in a car, you’ll have access to it,” he said. “I think if it’s used by everyone it’s a no-lose situation. It’s like supplying water to the city. We would rather the city contract out to one main provider with one set of pipes rather than each resident contracting out individually with pipes running every which way. I’m not trying to kill private enterprise since I know it will impact Internet Service Providers. I’m trying to pump up the use of personal devices.”

WFI has agreed to give the municipality its two first towers for free and will then charge the city between $5,000 and $7,000 for each additional tower. The city will most likely need between five and six additional towers after the first two are installed. Users will be able to access the signal just like they access an FM/AM radio signal. They will be able to pick up reception within a half-mile radius. The entire city of Hermosa Beach is about 1.3 square miles.

Aside from the towers, the city would pay for maintenance fees and the necessary amount of bandwidth, which is the amount of resources needed for users to log onto the Web for various Internet activities (e-mail is a low-intense use while downloading music is a high-intense use). The new service would be equivalent to a high-speed DSL connection.

“Without it up and running, it is hard to see how much bandwidth we will need to buy,” added Keegan. “In the beginning, we won’t need as much since users will be in the process of converting over to it.”

The city would actually save money by departing from its “T1” Internet access in lieu of the new system.

Keegan researched the idea after installing the wireless service at his Manhattan Beach-based business, Manhattan Bread Company, for his customers for free.

Some may express a bit of skepticism in visitors traveling in droves to use the free service. The same theory surfaced when Keegan first installed the service at his business that serves as a coffee shop/ restaurant of sorts.

“This never happened here,” said Keegan, “and I don’t think it’s going to happen here. If it does, there are ways to encrypt the use and charge people. My goal is to introduce the program at no charge to residents and see how they like it.”