The Oregonian’s Mike Rogoway reports on the status between possible interference between the city-sponsored WiFi network being built by MetroFi and the volunteer network managed by Personal Telco (gallery).

Michael Weinberg reported to the volunteer group’s message board this week that he’d run into MetroFi signals on the same channel as public Wi-Fi nodes he operates. The possibility of MetroFi interfering with Personal Telco’s established free service has been one source of concern about the citywide wireless project, and so I asked Michael to elaborate on his experience. Michael said he asked MetroFi to switch channels in places where its network overlaps with his, and the company said it would. Michael said he hadn’t actually run into any interference, just the possibility of it. So I asked Michael what he thought of the company’s response, and how he evaluates the likelihood of interference given this first experience:

“Responsiveness seems good…At this point I don’t think there is an issue, MetroFi seems willing to accommodate others. It will be interesting to see if any situations arise where there’s no easy way to resolve things. There are a few ways for things to go then: Someone decides it’s not worth it and takes off; the newcomer defers to the person who’s been there longer; the bigger entity takes an incumbent attitude (ala T-Mobile Pioneer Square conflict way back when); or everyone grudgingly lives with degraded service.

Caleb Phillips, a member of PersonalTelco’s NetworkOperationsTeam has posted the Unwirepdx Testing RFP and is planning to bid on the project with PSU computer science professor Bart Massey and some of Bart’s students.

MetroFi is still testing its service. Parts of the city are expected to be online by the end of the year.

Posted by Sam Churchill on Sunday, November 5th, 2006 at 9:55 pm.