Last night at the PersonalTelco meeting in Portland, Oregon, Nigel Ballard announced that the Portland International Airport will have free Wi-Fi. The Port of Portland will turn on 25 access points by Oct. 1 and offer free WiFi at gates and check-in areas for one year. The Cisco 1300 and 1200 series units are backhauled with a T-3 connection. After the first year, the Oregon Port authority will then re-evaluate the service and decide whether to charge or not. Also in October, the Willamette Week article on free WiFi is due to appear in the South West Airlines flight magazine.

Ballard (right) also said he is evaluating the Possio PX30, a one-piece AP. Ballard claims he has one of the few units in the United States. The Possio PX30 is a hackable Linux-based wireless router featuring WLAN, Bluetooth, OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative), and Java support. It is an open platform supported by a " Developer Zone" website, and can integrate diverse kinds of networks.

The PX30 is based on a single-board computer with an Intel XScale PXA255 processor running at 300MHz. It boots from a 32MB internal Flash disk, and includes 64MB of RAM. An available option adds WAN connectivity through support for GPRS, UMTS/TDD or FDD, with additional protocol support under development. Here's more on Possio from Linux Devices and Gizmodo.

Ballard also noted that the Oregon Health Sciences Center will soon offer free WiFi for both patients and administrators. The network, composed of some 125, Cisco 1200 series APs, is actually two networks in one, a secure internal network using end-to-end security, and an external network for patients. The hospital has to deal with a demanding set of security requirements spelled out in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996.

Unrelated is the Portland Research and Education Network (PRENnet) which is using 80.16a-like backhaul between OHSU on the hill above Portland and Portland State University, a few miles below.

Another noteworthy tidbit; Portland's transit agency, Tri-Met, is experimenting with mobilized WiFi on at least one of their light rail cars on the Airport run. According to Nigel it's currently working in tests but the solution is a proprietary one.

Portland appears to be on its way to becoming an "unwired" city -- arrive at PDX, take the train into the city, and get off at Pioneer Square -- with free WiFi all the way.