Re: Wobbly Wi-Fi strives for stability in Portland (TheOregonian)

On Tue, 4 Sep 2007 09:38:08 -0400, "Tyler van Houwelingen"
<tyler-V1V7y2s5pYxWk0Htik3J/[email protected]> wrote:
>
> You may have seen this as it is a local article (Oregonian) and mentions
> PTP.  I am curious what you guys think of the MetroFi service in
Portland.

I think Caleb did a good job of summarizing things. MetroFi has been
unimpressive to many of us in Portland (PTPers and non-PTPers alike). Their
service offering is unimpressive: Free, slow internet that's jam packed
with ads and MAY require buying a device that MAY make things better. Their
network is unimpressive: see Caleb and Russell's excellent research, as
well as numerous complaints of it just not working. Their community
relations are unimpressive: the MetroFi wiki page makes this case fairly
strongly.

> "Personal Telco Project was able to do a lot of stuff because we're
> volunteers," he said. "That gives us a huge advantage in terms of
> accomplishing a lot of things."

I want to clarify this a bit. I was glad that this part of the interview
was quoted, but this quotation is rather vague without the context in which
I said it. I was basically arguing that if you want to offer free wifi on a
large scale, you really need to be ready to give it away, otherwise I think
you're going to be hamstrung by the opposing demands of making it
functional and making it profitable.

There are many notable, free, networks that seem to work fine, where the
provider isn't looking to make money off the network (Google Mountain View,
PDX Airport, Personal Telco). There are also plenty of examples of not-free
networks that seem to do fine (T-Mobile, Eleven Wireless, countless
Nomadix-empowered hotels). My feeling, and I think the market has borne
this out, is that it's foolish to try to have both.

PTP, as an all volunteer group, gives away the labor and the expertise, and
our node hosts give away, in turn, the bandwidth. This does mean that we
can't send 20 trucks out tomorrow to mount things all over, but it also
means that you won't ever hear us respond to coverage complaints by saying
"Sorry, not financially viable." It also means you won't see a bunch of ads
when you use it.

At the end of the day, it's up to the individual to choose which model they
think is better. I think what we're doing makes more sense, at least for
Portland.

Michael

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