The Multnomah Villager

SO, as you Portlanders probably know, the city is in the process of rolling out free (ad-supported) wifi throughout the metro area. Now that the service has gone live downtown, they’re rolling it out to the neighborhoods. I noticed the distinctive routers up along Capitol Highway a few weeks back, and I got to wondering whether or not the signal would be able to get down in the hollows, since I live down the hill on 35th. Well, my curiosity is about to be satisfied it seems, since on the way home from breakfast on Saturday I noticed a brand new Metrofi router installed on the light pole right outside my house!

Mrs. V immediately began plotting to abandon Comcast, and I wondered if the signal was live yet. As of Sunday, it’s not - at least I can’t pick up a wireless signal, but then again most of the other usual suspects that pop up in my available networks list didn’t seem to be visible either. I’m going to take the ol’ laptop up to Journeys tonight I think and see what sort of wireless signals pop up from there. It would be nice to be able to use MetroFi’s signal up in the Village, although at home I’ll stick with wireless Comcast for the speed thanks very much. More details to come as I discover them.

UPDATE:Sunday night (the 1st) I schlepped my laptop up to Journeys to check out whether or not I could see the Metrofi signal. I could not. However, I COULD pick it up in my car and liekly could have gotten a signal out on the porch, since penetration into buildings is a known limitation of the MetroFi signal. The router at my house does not appear to be active yet, I can’t see as an available network from right below, although I could pick up an unsecured network that I can’t see from inside the houe.

Lots of people have complained about not being able to use the MetroFi signal indoors. To do this requires a wifi signal booster, which is not a terribly expensive purchase, especially compared to the monthly cost for broadband. On the business side, if I was running, say a small coffee shop in the Village, purchasing a signal booster is probably WAY cheaper than setting up your own wifi broadband, so hopefully the presence of MetroFi will give business owners who might benefit from wifi a less expensive way to add the service.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 10:11 am and is filed under Services, ch-ch-ch-changes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.