The idea, he said, is pretty simple: Identify places where there is a lot of cellular congestion and build Wi-Fi networks there.

Over the next several months, Towerstream plans to expand an existing pilot Wi-Fi zone in New York and also hopes in the next year to add wireless “hot zones” in San Francisco and Chicago.

While its core business is selling Internet service to businesses, Towerstream hopes to wholesale its hot zone networks to cellular carriers looking to improve their performance in congested areas.

“We don’t see that problem going away anytime soon,” Thompson said. “It’s really a real-estate issue, not a technology issue.”

The idea of using Wi-Fi to ease cellular overcrowding doesn’t seem that crazy these days. Just last week AT&T announced its own hot zone plan for San Francisco and New York.

The idea of hot zones is not new for Towerstream either, Thompson said. The company first had the idea about four years ago, but at the time there were few Wi-Fi capable phones and not the kind of mobile data congestion seen in big cities.

For now, though, Towerstream’s announcement is mostly a statement of intent, rather than a detailed plan. The company still has to acquire many of the rooftop rights it needs to build its hot zones, and it hasn’t said where within each city it will offer the wireless connections.

Towerstream also doesn’t have any announced carrier partnerships, but Thompson said that it is in trials and said the Wi-Fi hot zones it is building will be capable of working with multiple carriers simultaneously.

“We know there is a lot of value in these networks,” he said.

Among the more than 260 applicants included on the bidder list released last night by the FCC (accepted applications; incomplete applications) are AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Cox Communications, Google (bidding as Google Airwaves Inc.), MetroPCS, Qualcomm, National Datacast (the for-profit subsidiary of the Public Broadcasting Service), Alltel, Towerstream, Chevron and Frontier Wireless (EchoStar).

And then there’s zillionaire investor Paul Allen–Microsoft’s other founder (pictured above). Applications from Vulcan Spectrum LLC and Bend Cable Communications LLC, both Allen-backed ventures, have been accepted by the FCC. Seems Allen fancies himself the Pied Piper of the Wired World, and the Wireless World as well. Perhaps someday we’ll have the Paul Allen Brain Atlas, the Paul Allen Telescope Array and the Paul Allen Advanced Wireless Services Spectrum.