Public Power - September/October 2007 - (Page 53)

COMMUNITY BROADBAND City-Wide Wi-Fi: Lessons Learned and Emerging Applications By Cathy Swirbul concept of city-wide wireless high-speed Internet access has been both idolized and demonized by experts, depending on who you talk to. Supporters praise the potential of providing low-cost Internet service city-wide using wireless and the many creative municipal applications made possible. Others caution that serious business issues must be addressed to make the technology financially viable for the builder and operator of the network. The city of Riverside, Calif., was looking for the best way to deploy metro-scale wi-fi at the lowest financial risk to the city. City officials adopted that conservative approach in part because of challenges other communities were facing. “Initially, a lot of cities were trying to build and operate wifi networks themselves and spending their own city funds,” said Steve Reneker, Riverside’s chief information officer. “It costs about $100,000 per square mile to build your own infrastructure and then there are support costs. “Some cities were also looking at getting subscribers to pay for the service but many haven’t found a lot of success with that model,” Reneker said. “So we decided to go lowrisk and find a carrier that was interested in our model.” The city went out to competitive bid, received six responses and accepted AT&T’s proposal. AT&T’s www.APPAnet.org The model included building a city-wide wi-fi network and a public safety private network for Riverside’s police and fire departments. The city of Riverside has committed to being an anchor tenant on the network and committed to $2 million in services over five years. Additionally, the city and a nonprofit organization, SmartRiverside, teamed up to provide 30,000 free desktop computers to households earning less than $45,000 and giving them free Internet access. AT&T is building the network at no cost to the city. Revenue is generated by advertising carried on the network, by the city agreeing to be an anchor network tenant, and through premium services offered by AT&T for higher speed wireless. At no cost to AT&T, the city is providing access to all its street lamps, traffic signals and city facilities where wireless transmitters/receivers will be mounted, and the electrical power used to build the network. AT&T provides free Internet service up to 512 K, but is selling higher speed options and bundling packages of additional features for customers. The network went live May 7, 2007, serving a two-squaremile area that includes the utilities operations center, one police substation, a residential area and a large regional auto center. Reneker estimated the entire 86-mile area will be cov- ered by March 2008. Riverside plans to use the network to control many of its 354 traffic signals and operate surveillance cameras at those intersections. Also, the city will deploy 300 video surveillance cameras around town to catch graffiti artists, gang activity and illegal dumping. Within the next year, Riverside plans to connect the city’s parking meters, the ball field lights, and sanitation pumps and valves at various municipal buildings over wi-fi. Beyond that, the city is evaluating wireless electric meter reading. “All these wireless applications could save the city approximately $1 million annually in communications, but the real benefit is enabling new solutions that were not affordable prior to wi-fi,” said Reneker. “Running city-owned fiber is always the best solution, but the costs are about $150,000 per mile,” said Reneker. “Cities that could not afford fiber went to commercial T1 or DSL services but had to commit to long-term contracts. The city of Riverside is replacing our T1s and DSL with wi-fi to reduce our existing costs, but fiber is still going to provide faster service and is still preferred. Now applications that could not be deployed due to costs, can finally be considered because of wi-fi. The city of Riverside expects its costs to increase due to the additional number of applications we intend to deploy. Wi-fi is not a replacement technology, but a supplemental technology with speed and capacity constraints.” Granbury, Texas, a Fort Worth suburb, began its foray into metro-scale wi-fi in a public-private partnership. The city worked with a private company to deploy a wireless network similar to the one used in Corpus Christi to carry public safety, municipal and residential Internet traffic. The public safety aspect of the network was top priority. “I wanted real computer power in the police cars – data, photos, video and Internet access,” said Anthony Tull, Granbury’s information technology director. Granbury used $70,000 of a homeland security grant to buy wireless laptops for 10 police cars, as well as senior police department staff, the fire marshal and health inspector. The use of the in-vehicle wireless laptops has streamlined police operations and saved the city $78,000 in eight months. The money saved was allocated to SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2007 53 http://www.APPAnet.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - September/October 2007

Contents Washington Focus 10 Questions Public Power (Every) Week Training Tomorrow’s Work Force What’s in Your Wallet? U.S. Lags in Broadband Deployment Now What? For Engineers Safety Community Broadband For Governing Boards Human Resources Hometown Connections Customer Service DEED Index to Advertisers Advertisers by Category Parting Shot

Public Power - September/October 2007

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