(Some) Results are Out
Posted by Caleb Phillips on 29 March 2007As planned, at the March monthly meeting of the Personal Telco Project, Russell and I announced some preliminary findings. We intend to release a full technical report in the coming days/weeks. Rather than
repeat the results reported tonight, I thought I’d give some links to online coverage which has been amazingly speedy:
- Portland Mercury: The Early Verdict on MetroFi is In…
- Oregonian: WiFi-Testing, an Early Read
- Daily Wireless: Personal Telco’s Independent Report on MetroFi’s Coverage
- Portland Mercury: Unwire Portland: Municipal Marvel or Monumental Muckup
- Oregonian: Grassroots WiFi enthusiasts provide grassroots wifi testing
- Furious Nads: Grading MetroFi
- Willamette Week: Portland’s network sucks inside and out…
As our analysis approaches completion, more results will be posted here.
April 7th, 2007 at 10:33 am
MetroFi will fail where it counts - ROI.
Every taxpayer can tell you just how efficient and robust public/municipal/government services are. So let’s reward our government’s long record of graft and incompetence by granting the powers-that-be more of our tax dollars to build and manage a WiFi network… ignoring multiple offers from the private sector to do the same thing - for free.
a few years from now, the public WiFi budget (our tax dollars) will continue to grow and the service itself will deteriorate. This is entirely predictable. Government should not be in the business of building and/or managing networks. Our buses and trains don’t run on time, so why on earth would we expect any level of success in delivering WiFi?
We should be stripping responsibilities away from government, not adding to the leviathan. Let private enterprise and markets work as they should… quality and equity will far surpass any comparable municipal efforts.
When the time comes, the folks that pushed this public WiFi project should be held accountable… they have disregarded all warnings and precedent. If they worked in the private sector they would be fired. The public WiFi project will never achieve the return-on-investment that it’s owners (taxpayers) should require. It will become yet another political and budgetary football to be kicked around the corrupt halls of governance, and in the end - having missed our chance for free (privately-funded) WiFi - we’ll all end up paying Starbucks/T-Mobile for our WiFi anyways…
April 8th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Mike,
Actually, the MetroFi network is entirely funded by private venture capital. The buildout of the network has cost Portland taxpayers no money. Now, there were some initial expenses - mostly in the form of consulting and advise in the construction of the RFP, and there are city employees who are being paid to oversee the project. And of course, there is the “independent testing” which is being paid for by the city. But…the network itself is entirely privately funded (as you desire). MetroFi’s business model is such that they hope to recoup the costs of the network (approx $10-million, in Portland’s case, I guess) though advertisements on their free-as-in-beer connection, and subscription costs on their “premium” connection.
It occurs to me that the official unwirepdx website ought to put a bit more effort in advertising the business model of the MetroFi network in order to save from the misunderstanding you seem to have had. Now, I’m not certain I’ll blindly agree with you that privatizing these types of networks is the best approach - certainly we can see some historical problems with providing state-sanctioned monopolies for communication utilities. Municipal wireless networks are still new, and people aren’t sure what “works” yet. Only time will tell if MetroFi’s model will “work”, for the sake of the denizens of Portland, I hope it does.