Another one bites the dust
Another commercial metropolitan WiFi project grinds to a halt, MetroFi in Portland. Dailywireless.org has the article:
In Portland, as in other cities, Metrofi offered a $19.95/mo tier (without ads). But MetroFi’s free, ad-supported, WiFi tier set the company apart and was undoubtedly the most popular option.
The latest numbers released by Metrofi stated some 20,000 people a month were using the system. CEO Haas claims that 150,000 out of 540,000 people had access to the service.
Digging a bit further those claims of reaching about 30% of the city seem to have been dodgy, with plenty of access points not operational or not broadcasting, or are calculated overly optimistic:
We have previously estimated that on a spatial basis their existing network covers only about 4.2% of the 134 square-mile city’s outdoor areas to the “90% probability of a connection to a 30 mW client device” standard.
MetroFi has said that the City and MetroFi are using a 500-foot radius, but even assuming that, you only get about 11-15% of the area covered. To get to 30% on a population basis, roughly speaking, you’d have to assume that the population density of the covered areas is twice as high as the city as a whole. We wonder if that’s true.
The article also includes a letter from MetroFi to the City Of Portland, with some interesting facts:
The City of Portland network is comprised of 598 access points and is used by approximately 16,000 residents and visitors per month. April had 306,000 hours of use. Our operating expenses include pole attachment fees and power, the BAP locations, backhaul transport via microwave the Pittock Building and Internet transit. These expenses are approximately $15,000 per month.
The network uses Microsoft SideGuide, “the best advertising platform we have for Wi-Fi revenue generation”. Users must download and install Microsoft’s SideGuide to continue accessing the free WiFi service. If you’ve got a PC.
DailyWireless.org has a nice roundup of US city-wide WiFi projects, covering deployment of smart metering and other municipal services on municipal wireless systems, enabling local fire & police departments, the Peronal Telco Project, synergy between community efforts and municipal policy goals:
There are hundreds of thousands of broadband connections [in the city]. We could unwire Portland tomorrow if enough people got on board.
True, so true.