MINISTER
OF PROPAGANDA Nigel Ballard makes the case that the Internet
should be wireless, everywhere and open to all.
In Boston, they dressed up like Indians and chucked tea
into the harbor. The French stormed a prison. In
Portland, they... bolted a box to a pole on top of a college
dorm?
The Box - thin, beige and about as wide and tall as a
toaster - sits atop Portland State University's Ondine dorm
on Southwest 6th Avenue. It beams a radio signal across the
Willamette to the east side.
Not very sexy. Yet some think the Box marks the beginning
of an Internet sea change.
Right now, Qwest will sell you a dial-up account for
$18.95 a month. Comcast would be delighted to provide
broadband for $55.95. Can't pay? The library is at 10th and
Taylor.
But picture this: The blip from the Box grows to blanket
Portland. The transmission delivers the Internet through
thin air, to any desk. boudoir or handheld gadget in reach.
For free.
It's not just some techno-commie pipe dream. Portland
State and Oregon Health & Science University are funding the
Box, which they installed this spring, to gauge how strong
and long its signal can go. The city of Portland is watching
eagerly.
Behind the experiment lies a radical notion: that the
Internet is as important to Portlanders as water, power or
paved streets. In other words, in the 21st century, the
right to Google is as fundamental as the right to an
education.
"The Internet should work more like a public road and
less like an expensive hetitleh club," says City Commissioner
Erik Sten. Of course, in some quarters, them's fightin'
words.
"If they compete with us, they can expect a competitive
response," says Don Williams, Comcast's Portland spokesman.
While debate rages on over who should run Portland
General Electric, the city's most prominent power company,
some are thinking about the utility of tomorrow: a cloud of
wireless Internet access over Portland, run for the public's
benefit.
"Right now we don't really have competition for Internet
access," Sten says. "It makes sense for the public to
provide itself with some form of cheap access."
But if Portland becomes the first big city in the nation
to blanket itself with free Internet access, the vision
behind the coup won't originate with a government plan or
corporate initiative.
Instead, the trail to the Web's promised land will be
blazed by a wildly enthusiastic band of volunteers known as
the Personal Telco Project. And no one sums up the goals of
these guerrillas who have already installed free wireless
Internet in scores of bars, cafes and parks all over
town, who better than a talky, opinionated, tireless Englishman
named Nigel Ballard.
Ballard's not the founder or president of Personal Telco,
nor is he the sole architect of the city's wireless dream.
But he's right where it all comes together.
"I am," Ballard admits in his sly, south-of-England
twang, "as they say, ubiquitous."
Early in the afternoon of June 5, as storm clouds ferment
above, two men in mountaineer's harnesses creep along the
steeply pitched roof of Hostelling International's Hawthorne
Hostel. A thick nylon rock-climbing rope snakes through
carabiners on both their hips, through a window and around a
beam in the hostel's creaky attic.
One climber, a Frenchman named Stéphane Chatre, stands at
the roof's peak, misty rain blustering around him. A
self-possessed guy fluent in English and eight computer
programming languages, Chatre thinks the perfect weekend
campsite is a hammock slung a hundred feet up in the
branches of an ancient Douglas fir. He coolly surveys the
hostel's brick chimney, looking for a place to stick an
antenna that can blast a radio signal deep into the
surrounding neighborhood.
On the hostel's front porch, open laptops, loose cables
and fancy toolboxes sprawl in an unkempt command post.
A half-dozen Personal Telco Project volunteers lounge
around with coffee and cigarettes, occasionally wandering
out in the hostel's yard to check the climbers' progress.
"Personal Telco SWAT team practice," someone deadpans.
Nigel Ballard sits in the middle of the non-action on the
porch. Two years ago, Ballard helped set up a free wireless
"hotspot" at the hostel, a little bubble of Internet access
powered by "wi-fi," radio that broadcasts information over
limited distances. Like most such hotspots, this one covered
the hostel building and not much else. Today, he's clad in a
black T-shirt emblazoned with an homage to the dairy
industry ads: "Got wi-fi?" (his own design). This
afternoon's goal is to make sure everyone in the bungalows
and businesses around the hostel can answer yes to that
question.
Ballard convinced Intel to donate some gear. The local
Internet company SpireTech agreed to chip in a 1.5-megabit
connection. And now, PTP is creating a super-hotspot.
By the end of the day, the hostel signal will reach three
blocks away and, according to Ballard, for those willing to
engage in "a little antenna trickery," all the way to Mount
Tabor.
The neighbors don't know free Internet's coming. That's
fine with Ballard and his comrades.
"Personal Telco's philosophy has always been, 'Act first,
beg for forgiveness later,'" Ballard says.
The nonprofit has never tackled a project of this reach
before. But in the four years since its founding, Personal
Telco has built 114 hotspots at businesses and public
places. The deal is simple: PTP volunteers will "unwire"
businesses willing to shell out for a DSL and a wi-fi radio
on the condition that patrons can use the system for free.
Personal Telco provides the Linux-powered computer to run
the hotspot. Tech support falls to a volunteer, usually
someone who lives within walking distance of the cafe, bar,
park or other hangout.
Sounds too good to be true. "People always look at us
funny, like, 'What's the angle?'" says Darren Eden, PTP's
president. But it works. Thanks to Personal Telco, you can
surf free in the moody darkness of Crow Bar on North
Mississippi Avenue, in the beery bedlam of Thirsty Thursday
at PGE Park, or at Backspace, a huge video game
emporium/gallery in Old Town. Ballard estimates more than
300 people use PTP hotspots daily; the most popular
locations serve dozens of users every day.
Lisa Belt of World Cup, the local coffee company with
cafes at Powell's, in the Pearl District's Ecotrust building
and on Northwest Glisan Street says the mini-chain was
charging customers to use its wi-fi service when Ballard
approached her last year.
"I think we were making $7 a quarter," she says. "Nigel
convinced us to switch. We were afraid people would come and
just hang out all day, playing Dungeons and Dragons or
something."
Instead, she says, free wi-fi lured a new crop of very
good customers.
"People come in to work," she says. "They look at this as
an extension of their work lives. And they are very good
about not being freeloaders."
As its hotspots mushroomed around town, Personal Telco's
monthly meetings grew from a half-dozen pint-hoisters at
Lucky Lab to 10 times that number. The gatherings can
include Intel designers packing next-generation laptops,
jet-setting France Telecom researchers and homeless kids
from Burnside shelters. The group adopted Urban Grind, a
cafe in a spacious converted Northeast Portland warehouse,
as unofficial headquarters.
Brenda Drain, one of Urban Grind's owners, says PTP and
free wi-fi have been key for the 2-year-old cafe, which
thrives in an obscure location off Sandy Boulevard.
"People call me every day and ask me, do we have Internet
and how much does it cost?" Drain says. "I probably answer that question three times a day. And when I tell
them it's free, they say they'll be here."
In 2003, when an Intel-sponsored study proclaimed
Portland the best city in the nation for wireless access,
Personal Telco got most of the credit.
"They've accomplished a tremendous amount with,
basically, spit, rubber bands and shoestrings," says David
Olson, the City of Portland's cable director. "Portland's
reputation for wireless is fantastic, and you can largely
thank Personal Telco."
The crusade isn't just about going wireless after all,
Starbucks has done that much. The coffee colossus offers wi-fi at more than 2,600 locations through a deal with the
cell company T-Mobile. But at Starbucks, you have to pay
$29.99 a month to surf. At Personal Telco hotspots, you
don't.
And, sure, that's good for business at Personal Telco
locations. But the group has loftier goals in mind. Its real
preoccupation is information, and setting it free.
"The idea of building a community-run network, and being
able to say to the telecom companies, 'Ha! See! We don't
need you!,' seemed like an incredibly fun goal," says Adam
Shand, the New Zealander who started Personal Telco in
November 2000, while he was working for a doomed Beaverton
dot-com. "It seemed totally feasible that anyone who wanted
to be online could be."
For Ballard, getting people online isn't just a hobby. To
him, it's a social crusade.
On a recent afternoon, at the wheel of his Honda Accord,
air conditioning at full blast, Ballard is dressed up like
England's tech-geek Johnny Cash: black shoes, black Levi's,
black belt and black dress shirt to match the black specs
and black hair. It's 81 degrees outside. Heat shimmers from
Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard's northbound asphtitle.
To Ballard, this is the Portland 'hood most affected by
the so-called "digital divide". The hard truth that rich
people have technology and poor people, often, don't.
"Broadband penetration is just pitiful around here,"
Ballard says as he hangs a left on Lombard. "Let's say I'm a
teacher. OK, class, tomorrow we're learning about a dead
white Englishman named William Shakespeare. Go home and
Google him tonight. Maybe I can do that at Catlin Gabel, all
the kids have laptops. In North Portland, a lot of kids may
have seen a laptop at Best Buy.
"Look, knowledge is power," he says. "It's a cliché, but
it also happens to be true. Google is the key to the secrets
of the universe, right? For a lot of people, it's just a
given. You have water, electricity and broadband, of
course. For a lot of people, life isn't really like that.
You can buy a lot of food for $52 a month. You can't eat the
Internet. There you have it, less knowledge, less power."
Ballard's conviction and charm, his elastic facial
expressions would be the envy of many a comic character
actor, have proved a lethal combination in his role as
Personal Telco's press officer (or, as one PTP member puts
it, "media whore"). The New York Times calls when it
needs quick wi-fi quotes, and TheWall Street
Journal cast him as the star of a story about wireless
security. The same moxie helps finesse donations from the
likes of Intel and AirSpan, the Florida company that
provided the Box on top of Ondine.
"Nigel is the evangelist," says Oso Martín of
Freegeek.org, another technology-focused Portland nonprofit.
"If you want to convince someone of the goodness and
rightness of something, you send Nigel. He's a hell of a
nice guy, and he's very passionate. The accent doesn't hurt,
either."
For this evangelist, and for Portland's burgeoning
wireless scene, hotspots at coffee shops and taverns is but
a start. The Box is where it is really at.
Without getting too technical, a primer:
Hotspots utilize wi-fi. The Ondine project lays the
groundwork for a technology called WiMAX, short for
Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, which
should be to wi-fi what Jack Daniel's is to
3.2-percent-alcohol beer.
Unlike wi-fi's short-range broadcast, WiMAX is designed
to carry broadband-quality signals over longer distances,
miles instead of blocks. That makes this emerging technology
the backbone of plans to deluge Portland with wireless.
A system of WiMAX transmitters on top of tall buildings
would beam signals to wi-fi radios scattered around the
city, which would relay them to waiting computers. Downtown
would come first; eventually, the entire city could have
wireless connectivity, something no other major metropolis
in the U.S. can now claim.
The city network scheme has many details yet to be
resolved, as well as a rather tangled parentage. Portland
State is managing the Box; PSU, OHSU and a Reed
College-based academic consortium have each kicked in
$10,000 to fund the tests. A steering committee including
the city, PSU, OHSU, private and public economic development
experts, Intel and Nigel Ballard is guiding plans for the
larger network.
They want it done cheap. Marshall Runkel, aide and
wireless point man for Commissioner Sten, estimates that if
the WiMAX and supporting wi-fi set-ups work, wireless could
blanket the downtown core for about $500,000. Later this
summer or early this fall, the steering committee expects to
start looking for private partners to build, run and
probably own a citywide wireless network.
A private company would benefit from streamlined city
regulations, access to public property and the city's
political backing. It would offer free access but could make
money by charging for faster, deluxe connections.
The desire to swaddle Portland in invisible digits isn't
entirely driven by concerns about the digital divide. Money,
as ever, is a powerful incentive. As laptops, PCs, Palm Pilot-style
handheld gear, TV, radio and cell phones merge into a
seamless new mobile paradigm, capital is expected to pour
into wireless technology.
"What we're really looking at is a different model of
economic development," Runkel says. "This is not saying that
we're going to give $30 million tax subsidies or incentives,
and then someone's going to move their headquarters here.
This is more about creating an environment where lots of
innovation can happen."
Ballard, who has emerged as the steering committee's
resident social conscience, says he doesn't really care why
or how such a network comes into being, or who runs
it, which, given the bidding process in the works, could end
up being a megacorp.
"I'm not out to get Comcast or out to get Qwest," Ballard
says. "I'm out to get free Google to as many people as
possible."
And yet there's no question that a network that exists,
in part, to give Portlanders a free Internet option will
unsettle powerful interests. The Net's present gatekeepers
think they're doing a fine job, thanks very much.
"What happens when [the city network's] projected
subscriber base is half of what they think it's going to
be?" asks Comcast's Williams. "What happens when the
technology shifts out from under them? Who will be there to
respond to those changes on the fly?"
If push does come to shove, the city and its partners in
the project would do well to keep Ballard and the zealous
geeks of Personal Telco close at hand.
"I want to live in the town with more Google access per
capita than anywhere in America, be you poor, be you rich,"
Ballard says. "And I'd like to look down the list of people
who made that happen, and there are many, and see my name
somewhere.
"Believe it or not," he says, "I can be kind of
persuasive."
