Salvaging Unwire Portland

Many of us in PTP have been fairly critical of Unwire Portland and MetroFi, but recently I've found cause to step back and look at things from a different perspective. My shift in thinking came from hearing about the hopes that many Portlander's had for the Unwire initiative, and their subsequent disappointment with the service that MetroFi has provided as the winner of the RFP.

I realized that it isn't fair to lump together the goals of Unwire Portland with the shortcomings of one service provider. The fact is, there were lots of good ideas that informed the Unwire Portland initiative, many of which we share and probably inspired, and those continue to be good ideas that could benefit the community.

I strongly believe that Personal Telco has the knowledge and the public trust to act as a leader in overcoming the disappointment with MetroFi's execution of the Unwire Portland project, and helping Portland (by which I mean the hundreds of thousands of citizens) achieve the wireless access and services that so many hoped for.

Food for thought: Russell Senior has long maintained that if we got 10% of the APs in Portland switched to open access mode with an obvious ssid (such as www.personaltelco.net) we would have virtually the entire city unwired tomorrow.

Our involvement as PTP volunteers has been predicated on the concept that each of us can and should take the steps to create the community network we envision. Let's spread that idea so that all the other individuals and organizations that have visions of a public-benefit wireless network can begin to turn their hopes into reality.

I've talked with the other officers as well as our Education and Outreach director, and we're hoping to get as many of the original Unwire Portland stakeholders together for some type of public forum. I hope we can convince them that it's a good idea to look at what has come out of the project so far and discuss what can be done by the community, going forward, to realize the many public benefit goals that we all share.

I hope that many of you will find some inspiration in this effort and join in making it work.

Thanks,

Michael

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