You Get What You Pay For
Posted by: kmikeym | From: March 19, 2008
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.)
When the city decided to build an Aerial Tram they actually paid for it. The city never paid Metro-Fi any money, they allowed them to use city infrastructure to build the network, but they refused to spend taxpayer money on the project.
I think free wi-fi is a great idea.
Granting a VC-funded company permission to build an ad-supported network was seen by a lot of people as doomed. I hoped it would work, but from the first press conference things seemed fishy. The idea is great, the implementation was poor.
Posted by: Mikey at March 19, 2008 4:18 PM
Or maybe just ahead of its time? If the 801n standard is truly as big an improvement over current Wi-fi standards as it claims, an implementation using Metrofi's existing infrastructure but new antennas could solve the problems.
Maybe it will all come together in a few years...
I still think a base-level communications system funded through ads can work.
Posted by: D.J. at March 29, 2008 1:08 PM
"The only people who ever seemed to think anything would come of this project were MetroFi and the City"
I was excited and hopeful. I didn't know about the history of MetroFi or the city's technology implementation, but when the city says its going to build an Aerial Tram and then they do it so I believed.
"Portland's poor decision to try to get a free Wi-Fi cloud is the real cause of the failure."
Trying to give free wi-fi is a bad idea?
Is universal health care a bad idea?
I find this thinking flawed as it wouldn't be free because taxes would be paying for it, no?
Posted by: Steve Schroeder at March 19, 2008 3:38 PM