Midtown Manhattan is getting a massive Wi-Fi hotspot from the CBS that will deliver news, sports, and entertainment free of charge to users of cell phones, laptops, and other devices.

The "CBS Mobile Zone" will cover a 20-block area from Times Square to Central Park and from 6th Avenue to 8th Avenue. Users will also be able to surf the Internet on the system.

"It already is up and running along Broadway," said Shannon Jacobs, a CBS spokesperson. "We expect it to be fully running within a month." CBS is giving out routers to local businesses, including restaurants and coffee shops, to help in the rapid deployment of the network.

The effort is part of a six-month pilot program with city partners Metropolitan Transportation Authority and New York City Transit to test the system. The CBS Mobile Zone also draws on resources of CBS Outdoor, which has thousands of billboards and displays across the U.S.

CBS has partnered with several firms in developing the zone over the past six months. The partners range from mesh networking specialist Tropos and wireless service management platform provider Aptilo to entertainment providers like Can-Do Entertainment. Additional partners include BIG, Wi-Fi provider FON, Ning, / Goowy, Salesgenie.com, Veoh, Yelp, and 1020.

"We are supporting the service flow," said Christer Holm, Aptilo's sales VP, Americas. "We're working to create a good end-user experience." He said there will be many advanced location-based services offered in the CBS hotspot. For instance, users will be able to identify nearby restaurants or sports bars on maps on their cell phones and whether they have three or four star ratings.

Holm said the system should be able to handle about 2,000 concurrent users now and he added that it will be "easy to add more later on." Aptilo's Service Management Platform enables seamless and scalable service delivery, administration, and monitoring that includes plug and play access and user authentication. It also assists in the delivery of ads and IPTV. "You can watch David Letterman live," Holm said.

Jacobs noted that routers have been placed at CBS billboards and signs as well as at subway entrances; she added that the service won't reach into subway stations or trains.

Users logging onto the free CBS site will see an ad-supported homepage that in addition to news offers music access, ringtones, and social networking opportunities. If successful, the CBS Mobile Zone will likely be replicated at other CBS Outdoor locations; interactive opportunities can be localized to individual billboards, CBS said.

"This offering will allow us to evaluate the prospect of applying Wi-Fi capabilities across our Outdoor properties globally," said Wally Kelly, chairman and CEO of CBS Outdoor, in a statement. "What better way to show we are committed to turning our Outdoor assets into next-generation interactive platforms than providing free Wi-Fi service in what is arguably the busiest stretch of real estate in the world."