Portland, Oregon, is seeing interest by bidders in plan to cover city with Wi-Fi service: Favor will be found with vendors who can incorporate limited no-cost access either by time or day or through a low-speed throttle. The proposal involves no city funds, much like Minneapolis's plan. The goal is to have downtown online by mid-2006 and the rest of the city by 2008. The city will guarantee certain kinds of business to the winning bidder.
This plan has generated virtually no organized opposition by competitive carriers possibly because the city lacks an intermediary such as in Philadelphia's situation. In Philadelphia, opponents claim that the non-profit that will deal with raising funds and operating the network through a contractor has no experience and will fail leaving taxpayers holding the bill. In Portland's situation, with no intermediate organization to which it will be committed, a private contractor failing to meet the goal would result in that contractor being replaced. And it's hard to argue that EarthLink or Qwest lacks the technical expertise to build or run such a network.
The Personal Telco Project has some objections as it's worried about interference with its existing community wireless footprint. This seems quite ridiculous as the Portland service will be primarily outside (and require bridges for inside use), and Personal Telco is unwiring mostly inside with a few outdoor venues. Channel selection and other factors should really make this issue moot. Nigel Ballard, a long-time member of Personal Telco, recently left the organization (where he volunteered) and his full-time day job to join Intel, which is a big backer of the plan happening in its own background.
The Personal Telco spokesperson said in the article, "It's like two cars driving on the same lane at the same time." That's a fundamental misrepresentation of Wi-Fi even through oversimplification. Rather, even when multiple access points are using the same channels in very close proximity--which will likely not be the case in Portland's rollout--it's more like a highway with many lanes and occasional congestion. The farther apart same-channel access points are placed, or the more directionally different their antenna radiation pattern, the less congested the highway.
Hi Glenn,
You've requoted one thing I said and made an enormous assumption about the context in which I said it, and about Personal Telco's work in general.
When I made the traffic lane comparison, I was discussing what would happen in a congested area (such as Pioneer Square where PTP and Starbucks both have Wi-Fi currently, on different channels) if the city project came in and grabbed a few more channels to fulfill the rather heavy requirements in the RFP.
Personal Telco has been actively engaged in building both an outdoor network and an indoor network. As someone who has been a guest speaker at our events, I expected you'd represent our project more accurately.
Furthermore, Personal Telco as an organization does not have "some objections" as you state. There are many in our group that have concerns about the RFP both on a technical level and financial level and these concerns extend beyond any potential impact to PTP's activities. Personal Telco will continue to do what we do best--teach people about community wi-fi networks and build them. It was in this spirit that I offered some thoughts to the Oregonian; unfortunately, the reporter, who has generally represented us well, chose to make it sound like a cage match between PTP and Portland.
As a journalist, you must realize that even the most well-intentioned reporter must take quotes out of context to create a concise story. In the future, I would hope that you'd make an effort to find out what was actually being said, rather than taking a quote further out of context.
Sincerely,
Michael Weinberg