This is slightly old news, but for those looking for video footage of the group, we have a channel on YouTube now with most of our videos from the past 8 years.
Recently, the Oregonian interviewed me for an article about low and no-cost Internet options in Portland post MetroFi. I appreciate that Mike Rogoway and the Oregonian consider our voice relevant and important to this discussion.
While I appreciate that in the aftermath of a large failure, such as MetroFi’s Portland network, there is a natural tendency to focus on the failure and to be pessimistic about the future, we feel that the Oregonian and the City are overlooking the great potential that still exists in the hands and minds of individual Portlanders willing to get involved and unwire Portland anyway.
Consider this:
There are approximately 2500 wireless access points per square mile in Portland. That’s 100 times the coverage that MetroFi planned to deploy. If only a fraction of these access points were setup as Personal Telco nodes, we could truly “Unwire Portland” overnight, with little-to-no extra expenditure AND no ads. It’s not that hard. We can help.
Though the Oregonian correctly quotes me as saying that there are few good options for individuals who are looking for a cheap or free service provider, this does not mean that no options exist. It’s absolutely possible to get broadband Internet access for very little money if you are willing to cooperate and share with your neighbors. The Personal Telco Project meets every Wednesday, and we’re eager to assist anyone who wants to setup a Community Network.
To be sure, there are still many barriers to Universal Internet Access in Portland, and these need the attention of the public, politicians and businesses. Wireless access is not a panacea, especially not when deployed by a single entity, like MetroFi, and the solution may require significant expenditures on infrastructure. However, these challenges are no excuse for pessimism or defeat in the face of one failed private company. Portland is home to one of the country’s great brain trusts for these issues, the Personal Telco Project. Get involved. Come to a meeting, join our mailing list, and share your connection.
Ask not what free WiFi can do for you, ask what you can do for free WiFi.
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My post to general stripped out the attachment which contains all the information for this event. But Hasson Company is hosting a Computer Recycle Day tomorrow Saturday the 31st of May 2008. There are two locations for drop off Metro East and Metro West the event is from 10am to 2pm.
Between Saturday evening, when a thunderstorm flickered the power and rebooted our primary nameserver, and about 5pm Sunday afternoon when we got the secondary fixed, we sort of dropped off the internet. Name resolutions for personaltelco.net (.com and .org too, one presumes) stopped working. This had some dire consequences for wifidog nodes that couldn’t look up the authserver and probably for mail delivery. I am still working on putting cornerstone back together and our secondary nameserver is back working again to hold down the fort in the mean time. We apologize for the disruption.
A week or so ago, the Personal Telco Project board of directors approved $500 in travel expenses for me to go to the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks 2008 in Washington DC. I’ve been asked to participate in a panel on Data Collection for Community Wireless Networks. The Summit is also providing me with a travel stipend of $350. Between the two, that should cover most of the travel expenses for the trip. I’ll leave Tuesday evening, May 27th, on a red-eye, arriving in DC on Wednesday morning. Thanks go particularly to PTP member Michael Rasmussen who donated $50 to help support PTP’s investment.
I was in Bellingham over the weekend and gave a talk on the Personal Telco Project, its history and philosophy and future, and showed off some gear. There was a good turnout and I wasn’t noticably boo’d off the stage, though someone did carp later about people using Windows in their presentations (I did, but only incidentally). Then I spent three days in Seattle helping to make some magnetic field measurements on the University of Washington campus. Did you know that the University of Washington is a wifi hoarder? No love for me. I am considering banning anyone associated with the institution from using any Personal Telco nodes in retaliation (I am directing hateful thoughts towards those responsible for making my stay there miserable. Congratulations, you are real humanitarians!). Finally, with the measurements done, I dropped in on the Seattle Wireless hacknight. Good fun. Then I drove home (less fun).
Keith Lofstrom, long time member of Personal Telco got his node, NodeKLIC, up and running for the first time yesterday. For a long while he’d been a Comcast customer and their terms of service prevented him. So, when a viable alternative arrived, he dumped their hoarding asses in the street and chose a different provider. Congratulations to Keith! Your community thanks you!
A generous donation arrived at the post office box yesterday or today. It is an AT&T Blackberry 8300 new-in-the-box, donated by someone who won it as a door prize or raffle. The donor would like to turn it into cash that will advance the agenda of the Personal Telco Project, particularly the notion of internodal links. As we are now in possession, it is up to us to manage the conversion to cash. If you are in the market for such a device as described above, please consider the advantages of purchasing it from us. You can email bids to us at info@personaltelco.net. If we don’t get enough bids from the Personal Telco community, we’ll probably try craigslist or ebay. Thanks for your generous support!
Red & Black Cafe used to be a node down on SE Division, but it’s old location closed last September. A new location has opened recently at SE 12th and Oak, and at their request we have plugged in a new device there. It should have lots of bandwidth. Enjoy.
We just setup a browser-based IRC client that will make it easier for people to contact our volunteers for node support and general wireless questions. Feel free to check it out at irc.personaltelco.net
For more IRC information, check out the wiki entry.
Also note that this may not be supported by certain browser configurations. You can always install an IRC client, such as mIRC, XChat or Irssi if the applet doesn’t work for you.
