FUQUAY-VARINA - The town will provide free wireless Internet service in its downtown areas after commissioners approved the $16,000 project in a unanimous vote earlier this month.

James Sauls, Fuquay-Varina's economic development director, said the Wi-Fi network is part of a town-wide metamorphosis.

"We're trying to give a quality of life that has a creative vibe to it," he said. "You'll be able to pop into one of our downtown establishments and open up your laptop."

The first wireless nodes, to be in place by June 1, will serve the downtown districts of Fuquay and Varina, while a second phase will provide access in Action Park and South Park, Sauls said.

People will be able to log on to the network with computers and other devices, such as smartphones, that have Wi-Fi access. The town will limit users to two two-hour sessions per day, hoping to prevent people from using the network for a full-time Internet connection.

A filter on the network will try to weed out spyware and pornography.

Mayor John Byrne said the connection was another way to bring life to commercial districts in Fuquay along U.S. 401 and Varina on N.C. 55.

"We fixed up the sidewalks and made it very nice by taking the wires underground," he said. "We want to encourage the use of our businesses in our downtown."

The system will consist of a web of hotspots that will relay data between users' devices and a central Internet connection point.

The price should be a one-time cost; the town will serve the public with Internet bandwidth that it already buys from Time Warner Cable, said Scott Clark, the town's information technology director.

"We're going to leverage our current infrastructure and capacity," Clark said.

He expects the network to deliver speeds of one to five megabits per second, on par with many home broadband connections.

The city of Raleigh also operates a municipal wireless network in parts of its downtown. Cary doesn't have a municipal network, but a business alliance offers a similar free service.

Michelle Muir runs the downtown Cary network with the help of volunteers and business owners. Downtown shops host the radio equipment and sponsors partially fund the project by buying advertising on the page users see when they join the network.

The network had 400 different users in the past month and has cost about $3,000 to operate since December 2009, Muir said.

The town of Apex operated a municipal wireless hotspot for several years but shut it off about two years ago.

The technology was only able to effectively serve people who were outdoors, and business owners set up their own networks in response. The company that maintained the equipment also went out of business, said Peter LaPiana, the town's director of information technology.