MetroFi beat out two competitors, EarthLink and VeriLAN, for the chance to "UnWire Portland," its offer sweetened by the fact that will be free to consumers and supported by advertisers. It will be the Mountain View, Calif., company's biggest territory to date.
Going wireless has been in the city's plans for several years, with the intent to make Portland more attractive for businesses and workers, and more efficient in its operations, such as processing parking meter transactions and improving emergency services. It's also seen as an opportunity for TriMet and Portland Public Schools to lower their cost of computerized operations.
Matthew Lampe, the city's chief technology officer, said the city also is taking steps to better serve low-income individuals.
"The UnWire Portland project was designed to lower existing barriers to entry for broadband internet access. The selected vendor, with its innovative approach that allows free access at broadband speeds, provides a significant cost advantage to the many people who have computers and now have to use dial-up connections due to the cost of broadband."
Lampe said that it's estimated that if 5,000 low-income families use the free broadband service, it represents a savings of more than $500,000 each year from the next-lowest price offering of the other bidders, and more than $1 million per year compared with today.
But cost alone doesn't address every barrier, Lampe said.
"The city is looking at how it can help further community efforts that are under way to provide access to equipment and training to best use the Internet. Today, programs like FreeGeek provide free computers (and the city contributes equipment to FreeGeek to facilitate this effort) and there is a similar program to help non-profit organizations. The city has a policy that low-income projects the city funds also have to include wiring to support broadband and allow the inclusion of broadband into the operating costs."
Lampe said the city is also working with other groups who assist low-income families, however, the city has not specifically budgeted funds to provide free computers.
Rashid Ahmed with the Portland Development Commission is part of the team working on the city's wireless efforts. Ahmed said the low-income public benefits are the biggest part of the puzzle in assembling a wireless Portland, with tremendous payoffs in terms of better education, a more qualified work force and economic development.
"If this works, we've essentially overcome the costs of subscriptions and the cost of accessing the Internet," Ahmed said. "We still have to solve the hardware issue and get computers into the hands of all citizens, and not just affluent citizens."
Ahmed said there are companies and organizations in Portland to complete that part of the puzzle, including One Economy, Personal Telco and FreeGeek.
The free service displays advertising in a one-inch wide banner at the top of each page and periodic pop-up ads between sites. MetroFi does offer subscriber services for $20 that would bypass the advertising. The advertisers will be targeting geographic and user habits but will not have access to personal or identifying information.
"We expect that as they get a larger inventory of ads, that ads will be presented based on ‘interest' profiles. These will be a combination the interests (users) have shown based on recent sites that they visited — someone has gone to the Masters Web site may be tagged a ‘golf enthusiast' and get golf equipment ads — and of the general area where someone connects to the network. So if in Southeast, a Southeast golf store would appear instead of a Beaverton golf store."
Ahmed says he has used MetroFi in California's Silicon Valley.
"It's a nice experience. It downloads quickly," he said. "I didn't have any problem with the inch strip. It's actually a pretty nice user experience."