I've only seen prepay wifi... you pay for the amount of time you'll be connected and they provide you with the credentials you'll need to connect to their wireless access point.
Provided you've already got the hardware (which you have by the sounds of it) then you'd just need to pay the provider.
There are some free-of-charge wifi spots popping up over the place...
Wikipedia has some info and some links to some interesting sites. I think the idea is that businesses, ie McDonalds, small coffee shops, etc... set up a wireless AP in the hope that you'll go there and buy their products whilst surfing the web for free, and that you'll potentially stay longer (and drink more coffee and eat more burgers) if you're happily surfing the web for 'free'.
---------- Post added at 22:23 ---------- Previous post was at 22:18 ----------
One thing to be careful of, however, is the presence of evil twin networks... these are wireless access points that are set up in the same location as legitimate access points with the sole intention of getting people to connect and then stealing any passwords, credit card numbers, etc... that they have used.
The customer is unaware that instead of connecting to the access point that they paid to use, they're really connected to the evil twin, so they quite happily access confidential information, buy stuff, etc... without realising what is happening.
The moral of the story is to check closely which network you're connected to if you ever use a public wifi spot.
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