Personal Telco in PDX
I spent the day in Portland this week in several meetings and finally culminating in the Eclipse and OTBC reception. While I was there, I wanted a chance to check out the Personal Telco project and see what they had to offer at some of their access points.
I headed down to Stumptown Coffee (the Ash Street location). I went in, bought some coffee, sat down and just tapped right into the Personal Telco wireless network. That was easy enough.
To me, this is a big deal. Portland is quickly becoming the friendliest big city I have ever seen in terms of wireless. Not only do they have wireless in the form of the Personal Telco project but the airport also has free wireless as well. Lord knows I can always find time to kill at an airport. So we have lots of free wireless access in Portland. Why is this a good thing?
Wireless access, and more importantly, access to cheap/free connectivity is just good for business. Connectivity is a commodity now and the price and access is getting cheaper and cheaper all the time. We’re seeing a co-op like organization pooling their resources and working together to provide what I consider to be a basic service. Is it like water or sewer service? Not quite, but I will say its a lot like telephone and cell service and we know how those big uber vendors are treating our city. Put this access in the hands of the people, let us innovate and keep those dollars local to Portland instead of some off-shore tax shelter. But I digress.
While I was digging around the Personal Telco pages and node information I realized its more than just “free wireless”. They have location specific media (music, video, etc) as well as wiki’s and even a local Debian mirror. Wow. Again, a vendor could probably provide all of these things but having it be a co-op like initiative we’re seeing a much more vibrant offering for the community.
I’m really excited about using the Personal Telco network and will be doing my best to map out their hotspots so I can better utilize and support them. I love it. Keep up the great work guys.
