MetroFi was founded in 2002 by Chuck Haas, who helped start Covad, and Pankaj Shah, in Mountain View, California.[1]
Investors included Sevin Rosen Funds, 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.[2]
MetroFi announced conventional Wi-Fi wireless Internet access to municipalities in September 2005 at the MuniWireless show in San Francisco.[3][4]
It began offering free, advertising-supported, unencrypted, low-bandwidth wireless Internet access in December 2005 in parts of its local Silicon Valley area.[5]
In most of its service areas it provided an unencrypted, advertising-supported "free" service as well as an encrypted (using Wi-Fi Protected Access), ad-free "premium" service for approximately $20 per month. During 2006, its data rate was restricted to 1 Mbit/s downstream 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 technology from SkyPilot,[6]
and the Webwise targeted advertising service from Phorm.[7]
Cities covered, according to the MetroFi Web site, included:[4]
The Riverside announcement included a partnership with AT&T announced in July 2006.[8]
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.[9]
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.[10]
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.[11][12]
On May 15, 2008 MetroFi announced that it was seeking buyers for its networks.[13]
Having failed to find a buyer, it scheduled and performed a shutdown of its network on June 20, 2008.[14]
MetroFi offered to sell its Portland network to the city.[15]
However, in October 2008, assets of the Portland network were seized by the city as abandoned.[16]
Santa Clara acquired the MetroFi network in that city to support its Silicon Valley Power utility.[17]
It redesigned and expanded service in 2012.[18][19]
