[wordup] Personal Telco kicks ass. ;)

[Adam Shand]

Probably not appropriate language from the President of Personal Telco, 
but hey, what the hell.  So apparently, per capita, we've gone and made 
Portland (Ore) the most wireless city in America.  Word to your WiFi.

For the curious Nigel is our press liason.

Adam.

From: 
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/business/1046782677268070.xml

Portland connects to top billing for wireless access

03/04/03
TED SICKINGER

Finally, a list Portland tops that we can be proud of . . . sort of.

 From the same folks who bring you Money Magazine's annual "Best Places 
to Live in America" survey, this just in:

When it comes to wireless hot spots, Portland is the hottest thing going.

Put another way, Portland is the most "unwired" city in America.

Whoopee.

But what does it mean?

In recent years, Portland and other cities competed for the title of 
"most-wired" city. But the march of technology has rendered that honor 
obsolete. The really with-it tech hot spots now tout their ability to 
support wireless access to the Internet.

And in that embryonic world, Portland has more locations per capita than 
any other U.S. city where people can use a laptop computer or other 
handheld device to tap the Internet via a "Wi-Fi," or wireless fidelity 
network.

Not that many people actually do access the Internet wirelessly. But 
they could in Portland, thanks largely to grass-roots efforts to provide 
free wireless access across the city.

Experts admit that wireless Internet access is still an enthusiast's 
technology, one limited to hardware geeks, business travelers toting 
Wi-Fi equipped laptops and people who think a telephone keypad is an 
acceptable keyboard.

Wi-Fi still faces hurdles to widespread deployment and adoption in the 
United States, including security problems, incompatible network 
standards and billing issues.

But "Wi-Fi is going to be a big deal in urban life," insists Sean 
Maloney, head of the communications group at Intel, which paid for the 
survey and is in the midst of a high-profile campaign touting a set of 
chips designed to enable laptop computers to access the Internet wirelessly.

Maloney calls Wi-Fi the most revolutionary technology to hit computers 
since the Internet browser in the mid-90s.

Market research firm IDC predicts that notebook computers equipped for 
wireless Internet access will account for 35 percent of all mobile 
computer sales this year, and 96 percent by 2006.

And for the time being at least, Portland is at the top of the wireless 
world, according to Bert Sperling, an area resident who is responsible 
for a variety of Best Places surveys around the country and who 
conducted this study for Intel. Sperling says the city tops San 
Francisco; Seattle; Orange County, Calif.; Washington; San Diego; 
Denver; Boston; Austin, Texas, and all the other supposed tech centers.

The rankings were actually based on a blended score of the number of 
wireless access points available, the percentage of households with 
Internet access and the number of wireless phone carriers offering 
Internet access.

Portland has 88 Wi-Fi hot spots in hotels, coffee shops and the airport. 
That's well behind larger metro areas in absolute terms, but a 
respectable showing when it comes to hot spots per 100,000 people.

Where Portland really shines is in its number of public access points -- 
130 -- where businesses and individuals provide the public with open and 
free wireless access to the Internet by allowing wireless access to 
their broadband connection.

Much of the credit goes to Personal Telco, a group of local computer 
hobbyists that has spent two years persuading individuals and businesses 
to donate high-speed Internet connections to its cause -- creating a 
"cloud" of free wireless access over the Portland area.

Using specially designed "wireless ethernet" cards, Web surfers within a 
block or two of the donors' homes or businesses can tap into the signal. 
Nigel Ballard, a board member at Personal Telco, said he was pleased 
with the results of the survey.

"We're an informed people. We embrace technology," he said. Portland is 
"a very viral community where good things and bad things get passed 
around quickly."

And technologywise, "we really do need a shot in the arm."