MetroFi Shuttering Citywide Wi-Fi Networks Still looking for buyers ahead of June 20 D-day.... Wednesday Jun 11 2008 11:39 EDT Tipped by Jon5  MetroFi found that ad-driven free citywide Wi-Fi wasn't profitable, so they're shuttering deployed networks. The company has told the majority of the nine towns and cities they service (including California and Illinois) that they're shutting down the networks on June 20. From the California report, it appears that MetroFi's selling the networks for about $150 per node, if anybody's interested. "The angel lady will be happy," jokes article submittor Jon, in reference to one Illinois woman who is both an angel guidance consultant and warrior against the unproven health hazards of Wi-Fi. Portland's network is also on the market if you're interested in acquiring an unprofitable business. |
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my fixed WISPHmmm, $135K for the network? Perhaps its time to turn it into a fixed WISP, only keep nodes electrically on that are necessary to deliver the bandwidth to the fixed location (house is on service contract), and sell much faster tiers (since you won't have other random users coming and going on the network, you can very easily model traffic). Don't let clients associate with repeaters, and stop letting associations once the number of users contracted on that node have associated, also don't let 11B clients associate. Think of it as a p2p fixed microwave link rather than a LAN. I'm sure customers will $50-80 a month for 10mbit/s upload. Also sell access to the backhaul wireless links (10s-100s of mbit/s), thats another thing that seriously killed these muni wifis. The corporation behind each one promised to sell carrier/enterprise bandwidth over the wireless backhaul, I don't think a single one ever did. | |
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BMWPlow
Anon
2008-Jun-11 2:35 pm
It is already shut off in some placesWe have noticed here in Concord that we haven't been able to use MetroFi here in about a week. Definitely a shame because I just convinced someone to drop their cable internet about 2 months ago and just got them hooked up about 2 days before they announced the closure. Oh well I guess. Time to wait for naked dsl in the area. | |
|  |  g0nepostalI Am The One Her Mom Warned Her About
join:2001-03-23
Burlingame, CA
Netgear R7000
Asus RT-N16
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Concord is already off?Already? That's too bad. I've hooked up several people to MetroFi too, friends who couldn't swing the price of broadband who were close to one the access points MetroFi mounted on the power poles in Concord.
I'll have to see if I can find them an alternative.
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