Almost like a quiet breeze blowing in off the Willamette, MetroFi is whisking away those myriad of 600 little cylinder shaped transmitters it installed on Portland streetlights.
In a word: nuts.
The system that was touted as the “next generation” of WiFi for the Rose City didn’t make it financially
so the next move is, well, there is no next move. MetroFi failed to establish a sales base for the advertising side of the model so the model collapsed. The City of Portland, other than another black mark on its record (the tram, the trolley, the sewers…but who’s counting) comes out a winner because it didn’t cost the taxpayers much. The web users come out the losers because now we have to resort back to the Portland Telco Project (a winner because they are the only show in town) which is still a loose nit…but well-crafted network of local wireless routers. But at the very least, THEY are still operating.
What went wrong with MetroFi is significant of similar public-private partnerships which appear on the surface to be viable yet, in practice, fail to function. The public sector oftentimes can’t run its operations on the for-profit foundation demanded by private enterprise…it just doesn’t understand the old principle, “you can’t spend more than you take in.”
This is not to fault the City of Portland. Perhaps if they had chosen a local company with a better plan this would not have been the outcome. Yes, there was a local company with a better plan. But who’s counting.
MetroFi simply didn’t sell enough advertising to support this 9 million dollar plus project. It’s all about the sales anyway. The idea of free wireless is still based on someone, somewhere paying for an ad so the rest of us can have a free service. So really, nothing is free. But it sounds good.
MetroFi has failed to meet many of its other promises to the cities it contracted with. They had claimed their networks work because of ad support yet they asked for money during construction. Portland was not alone in the shakedown…to use a non-pc correct term. Networks in Alaska, Ohio and California were also asked for dollars even though they were told they wouldn’t have to pay for the networks.
MetroFi is for sale. Not a good sign.
The service that did get hooked up was not up to par. WiFi doesn’t work yet inside buildings and the MetroFi signals were weak. There was no support for users. The free side was full of intrusive ads and some reported spyware. In short, it was a mess. And consider who would use the service? Would you want a complex splash page if you were trying to login in using an iphone?
Why didn’t Portland support Personal Telco? Even though it IS local and therefore must be mediocre (there is a growing suspicion that Portland bureaucrats treat everything local with contempt) IT WORKS! Several other cities in Oregon are following the Personal Telco plan. Just cruise downtown Portland and you CAN pickup free wireless.
Even without MetroFi’s demise, the muni-Wi-Fi model is in trouble. The near-future certainty now is that there will be multiple providers offering wired broadband speed service starting later this year with Sprint/Clearwire’s WiMax, and continuing through into 2012 with significant network build-out by Verizon and AT&T in several bands (including their new 700 MHz holdings.
MetroFi is the latest service provider to exit the municipal wireless business,” notes MuniWireless’ Esme Vos. “EarthLink has decided to shut down its network in Philadelphia and to stop the rollout of its network in Houston; Kite Networks, which had deployments in a number of municipalities, has gone bankrupt. Not a good sign for future WiFi projects.
The Personal Telco design model seems to be the best suited for Portland users…and considering whom the users actually are, why not support this model and get on with it?