Free Wi-Fi's future seems up in the air in Portland

[Chief]

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1191637550264110.xml&coll=7

MIKE ROGOWAY The Oregonian Staff
The future of Portland's experiment with free wireless Internet access appears precarious after city officials said wireless contractor MetroFi Inc. plans to stop expanding the Wi-Fi network.

**SNIP**

Outdoor Wi-Fi has difficulty penetrating indoors, he said, so the networks have poor coverage in homes, hotels and other places where people would be most likely to use it. That's created frustration and stunted networks such as Portland's.

"We're leaving a bad taste in people's mouths," said city Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who helped steer Portland's Wi-Fi project in its early stages.

**SCHNIPP**

Don't you think that someonecould have done a test setup, found out early on that the signal doesn't penetrate buildings, (DUH!) and saved the taxpayers in the People's Republic of Portland a ton of money??

::)

[Waterbuffalo]

You might that Earthlink and Google are also pulling back their WIFI investments. This is just one more sign that this will be done probably quite soon.

[Chief]

It just kills me how many rat holes Portland finds to piss money down. This one cost $10 Million, so far...

[Waterbuffalo]

:-) I do hope you get to ride the "streetcar named desire" through Portland.

One thing I didn't post on the streetcar threads, if you ever get a chance to ride the Portland version, 90 percent or higher is in Business districts in Portland, not very near homes until it gets near the end of its run near Legacy Good Samaritan does it finally get into some housing.

So shouldn't the Vancouver businesses pay the $300 Million that are along this line..

[Chief]

The streetcar and Loot Rail are both touted as Development tools for businesses; the though being that people will just come in droves to ride the cute trains around and shop. Go re-read tefen's post about the AIA Workshop, and you'll see exactly what is being said about that.

the whole "Free WiFi" in portland has been a joke from the start, because first and foremost, nothing is ever "free". And "Free" things almost always turn out to be worth exactly what you pay for them...

[Waterbuffalo]

Though there is free wifi in Esther short Park and The reserve? But it doesn't run all over the city.

I believe that the reason why Portland was looking at a City wide wifi system was to try and buck the corporate culture of telecommunications business that is getting fewer and fewer players every year. The city has had a this style and way of life for a long time and probably won't change any time soon.

It's probably going to be asked if I agree with this? I don't have argument one way or the other.

My position currently on Portland and its choices is I am not one to tell the residents of that city how to live their lives or make their community and they should not tell me how to do mine.. So if Portland citizen's want to pay for this boondoggle and vote for the people they do, then let them have it..

[Chief]

I don't think the City of Vancouver paid $10 Million like Portland did. Thank God thier Portland envy has some limts...

Portland seems to have an endless supply of public money to piss down every rathole in sight, and free wifi is just another example of that. Chalk this one up there right along side thier public financing of candidates for public office...

[Waterbuffalo]

The reason why Portland has so much money to fritter away, is they have the population and the political connections to get it.

If they didn't, 75 percent of our whining over here in Vancouver and Clarklog.org would not be happening.

Have you ever heard any of the Portland state and federal delegation actually say No to their constituents?

[Chief]

The Oregon congressional delegation are some of the best panderers in the Nation, and they play to the Far-Left Nutroots in Portland all the time. It sure ain't Rockefeller Republicans who own all those houses up in the West Hills...

A lot of this comes from the differences in our tax structures. The City has tapped into almost unlimited financial resources in and around Portland, and they have the density to make it effective. Trimet functions the way it does becasue they tapped into an extremely lucrative payroll tax on employers, that Clark County cannot come close to matching.

I won't debate the merits of free wifi, I am questioning the wisdom of giving a $10 Million project a "GO" only to find out later that the concept was flawed from the beginning, and if only they had done some homework, the City of Portland might have known that before they spent the money.

Vu Ja-De: The feeling that we haven't been here before, yet...

;D

[Waterbuffalo]

The reason why it was a go wasn't because MetroFi was going to pay and build it but then later come back and get some money from the City of Portland after it was built?

[Chief]

For whatever reason, Portland approved thier wifi plan, and started installation, before anyone realized there might be spotty coverage because the signal doesn't pass through certain obstacles, which requires more antennae and cable to fill in all of the dead spots, and significantly spiking the costs. but like I said, Portland has more money than they know how to comfortably spend, and nobody over there, or at least very few people seem to care.

[Waterbuffalo]

Bet you they could establish a service by putting cheap wifi routers off people connections and achieve the same goal? :-)

[Waterbuffalo]

<Bump..>
One of the reasons why I decided to bump this story is there a lot of other cities around the world that want to emulate Portland WIFI idea.
Olympia was considering putting up a wifi system too.. But lucky smarter heads prevailed and the cost was atrocious..


Story can be found here: http://www.theolympian.com/southsound/story/294573.html.

[Chief]

"The $20,000 the city has set aside for the project will not build a system," the group's report said. The Wi-Fi money will be spent elsewhere in next year's budget.

"They gave us a report and, in essence, a lot more questions came up than were answered," said Councilman Joe Hyer, who pushed the Wi-Fi idea along with Councilman TJ Johnson. "If we really wanted to do Wi-Fi right, we need hundreds of thousands of dollars, not tens of thousands of dollars."

A Wi-Fi system requires expensive hardware to broadcast the Wi-Fi signal and involves a contract with an Internet provider, not to mention system maintenance, group member Deborah Vinsel said.

Portland has so much money, they can afford to blow it like they do. Washington raises money a lot differently, so projects like this (thnkfully) end up getting a lot more scrutiny...

[karma]

All I'll say is this is another personal agenda that money was spent unwisely. It's seems no one wants to do the research on before putting this out?

[Waterbuffalo]

Karma it might have been a personal agenda but there was more research into it there than was done at the Portland level.

And Chief said it best, Portland has a lot of cash to burn off.. Like the Kuwaitti Oil fields to burn off excess gas..