In December of 2005 the City of Portland had a "wire cutting" ceremony which left us feeling concerned about the promise of Portland's Wi-Fi cloud. If you look at the Metro-Fi website today it sure does look like they have covered a large part of Portland:
But of course personal experience and Unwire PDX Watch have shown that the cloud they built is a myth and a recent Mercury article proclaims the project is Dead in the water. None of this comes as any real surprise. The only people who ever seemed to think anything would come of this project were MetroFi and the City, and neither have much of a successful track record when it comes to technology implementation. In the end you get what you pay for, and Portland's poor decision to try to get a free Wi-Fi cloud is the real cause of the failure.
(Whenever Wi-Fi networks fail one is obligated to bring up wonderful Hermiston.)
