The final report on the independent tests of Portland’s municipal Wi-Fi network by local tech activists is in. Local coverage, it concludes, is not what was promised.After independently testing the network, they have issued a report critical of the city’s acceptance last month of the downtown test network.
The report expands on a preliminary report that Caleb Phillips and Russell Senior issued in March that found coverage was spotty across a proof-of-concept area built by MetroFi, the city’s provider.
A press release accompanying the release of the report summarizes the findings:
a) The outdoor coverage provided by the MetroFi network is much less extensive than implied by their maps. The City’s testing only covered 1.6 square miles, about 1/2 of the area that the MetroFi coverage map implied, less than the 2 square miles minimum required by the RFP.
b) Of locations within 500 feet of an active access point (the Proof-of-Concept (POC) area definition agreed to by MetroFi and the City), Phillips and Senior found that only 31 of 53 outdoor locations selected using a random process provided a connection, a rate of about 58%. They calculated that the probability the MetroFi POC network meets the required 90% standard at about 2 in a billion. Their data suggests that the 90% standard was met only within about 250 feet of an access point.
Click here to read their report.
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