Airnet sales manager Ben Deller said providing the free service was more than a marketing opportunity.
"Because nobody was doing it properly we felt a sense of obligation - somebody should be doing it," he said.
"It's something a lot of cities around the world are doing and they seem to be benefiting from it.
"Long term we see an opportunity for much better Wi-Fi around Hawke's Bay - it was the first stake in the ground.
"We've started rolling out in Napier. We are approaching businesses and explaining the benefits of what we are doing and asking them to supply us with suitable sites and access. In return we are going to give the community access.
"It won't be open for two hours forever - eventually it will move to a quarter of an hour for anyone. Beyond that you will be able to buy prepaid access to the network, with similar pricing to what you would have on your home broadband rather than on the mobile networks.
"But the big bit is we are going to allow our residential customers to use their home data quota freely on our Wi-Fi network.
"Any data quota that they have they can happily use on their iPads, lap tops or iPhones anywhere on our network as we build it up in Hawke's Bay."
Airnet recently became 100 per cent locally owned and has an ambitious growth strategy, aiming to take as much as 30 per cent of the residential market share from rivals.
A rebranding and aggressive marketing campaign is planned, once clearance is obtained from several US-based record companies.
