The Willamette Week has an article about the less then spectacular progress of the MetroFi's deployment of free wireless internet hotspots in Portland (Oregon). Unsurprisingly the deployment hasn't been going as well as hoped, because, well ... it's hard to blanket an entire city with wireless, even when you're not trying to do it for free.
What is interesting, is that Personal Telco is being used as leverage to make MetroFi live up to their ridiculously over promised hype. There would be some significant irony if Personal Telco's greatest achievement was making a corporate live up the goals that Personal Telco itself espoused.
After months of negotiations, the utility and the wi-fi provider, MetroFi, have failed to strike a deal for how much to charge MetroFi for drawing power to run its system. This has effectively halted the free network’s expansion into the poorer neighborhoods that were supposed to benefit from the free wi-fi. MetroFi and Portland General Electric, which powers portions of the city not covered by Pacific Power, already have struck a deal granting MetroFi discounted rates. So, on PGE’s turf, wi-fi has spread downtown and as far east as Southeast 82nd Avenue.
... [snip] ...
MetroFi says its network is 20 percent complete. The city accepts the company’s word that it’s on track to be 95 percent complete by the end of next year. When the deal was announced in April 2006, the network was supposed to cover the whole city within a year or two—so, at best, it’ll be eight months late.
If MetroFi fails, Finn says, Portland will turn elsewhere—perhaps to nonprofit groups like Personal Telco or Free Geek—to bring high-speed Internet to people who can’t afford to buy it.
... [snip] ...
“It’s time for the rational people, the professionals, to come in and take this over, because the politicians know jack. They were promising things the technology couldn’t do, and a business model no one was going to get into,” says Craig Settles, an Oakland-based wireless consultant. “As a result, what we have now is a bunch of people who say, ‘If we can’t get it for free, we don’t want it.’ Like a kid in the sandbox.”