MetroFi was a provider of

municipal wireless network A municipal wireless network is a citywide wireless network. This usually works by providing municipal broadband via Wi-Fi to large parts or all of a municipal area by deploying a wireless mesh network. The typical deployment design uses hundred ...

service in several cities in the western

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

History

MetroFi was founded in 2002 by Chuck Haas, who helped start

Covad Covad Communications Group was an American provider of broadband voice and data communications. By 2006, the company had 530,000 subscribers, and ranked as the 16th largest ISP in the United States. Covad was acquired by U.S. Venture Partners ...

, and Pankaj Shah, in

Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...

. Investors included

Sevin Rosen Funds Sevin Rosen Funds (SRF) is a Texas-based venture capital firm credited with pioneering the personal computing revolution in the 1980s and also venture investing in Dallas. It was established in 1981 by L. J. Sevin, a former Texas Instruments eng ...

, August Capital, and Western Technology Investments. Funding of $9 million was announced in April 2004, as well as an "Investors' Choice" award at the Dow Jones Wireless Ventures private equity conference. MetroFi announced conventional

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wav ...

wireless Internet access to municipalities in September 2005 at the MuniWireless show in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

.Official website
via

archive.org The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

It began offering free, advertising-supported, unencrypted, low-bandwidth wireless Internet access in December 2005 in parts of its local

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...

area. In most of its service areas it provided an unencrypted, advertising-supported "free" service as well as an encrypted (using

Wi-Fi Protected Access Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2), and Wi-Fi Protected Access 3 (WPA3) are the three security and security certification programs developed after 2000 by the Wi-Fi Alliance to secure wireless computer networks. The All ...

), ad-free "premium" service for approximately $20 per month. During 2006, its data rate was restricted to 1 Mbit/s

downstream Downstream may refer to: * Downstream (bioprocess) * Downstream (manufacturing) * Downstream (networking) * Downstream (software development) * Downstream (petroleum industry) * Upstream and downstream (DNA), determining relative positions on DNA ...

and 256 kbit/s upstream. Coverage and performance of the premium and free service was otherwise identical. MetroFi also provided fixed-wireless service. The company planned to use

wireless mesh network A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a communications network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology. It can also be a form of wireless ad hoc network. Chai Keong Toh Ad Hoc Mobile Wireless Networks, Prentice Hall Publishers, 2002. ...

technology from SkyPilot, and the Webwise targeted advertising service from

Phorm Phorm, formerly known as 121Media, was a digital technology company known for its contextual advertising software. Phorm was incorporated in Delaware, United States, but relocated to Singapore as Phorm Corporation (Singapore) Ltd in 2012. Founde ...

. Cities covered, according to the MetroFi Web site, included: *

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

Concord Concord may refer to: Meaning "agreement" * Pact or treaty, frequently between nations (indicating a condition of harmony) * Harmony, in music * Agreement (linguistics), a change in the form of a word depending on grammatical features of other ...

Cupertino Cupertino ( ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, directly west of San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The population was 57,8 ...

Foster City Foster City is a city located in San Mateo County, California. The 2020 census put the population at 33,805, an increase of more than 10% over the 2010 census figure of 30,567. Foster City is sometimes considered to be part of Silicon Valley ...

, Riverside, San Jose, Santa Clara, and Sunnyvale *

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

Aurora An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of bri ...

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

The Riverside announcement included a partnership with

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...

announced in July 2006. A test of the ability to get a connection in outdoor areas within 500 feet of an access point in the Portland proof-of-concept network in the early spring of 2007 showed about a 58% probability using a standard 30 mW, low-gain client device. The report concluded that the probability the network was providing a connection to those devices in 90% of outdoor areas, as called for, was two in a billion. The Portland network was less than 30% complete, and as of October 2007 further deployment halted. The contract with Portland required MetroFi to complete the network by August 2009. A group monitoring the Portland network estimated that the network provided a 90% probability of getting a connection outdoors in about 4% of the city in late 2007. On May 15, 2008 MetroFi announced that it was seeking buyers for its networks. Having failed to find a buyer, it scheduled and performed a shutdown of its network on June 20, 2008. MetroFi offered to sell its Portland network to the city. However, in October 2008, assets of the Portland network were seized by the city as abandoned. Santa Clara acquired the MetroFi network in that city to support its Silicon Valley Power utility. It redesigned and expanded service in 2012.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Metrofi Wi-Fi providers Companies based in Mountain View, California