Public Power - September/October 2007 - (Page 54)

COMMUNITY BROADBAND police salary and overtime compensation. Next, Granbury plans to use its wireless network for automated meter reading, which will reduce costs by quickly pinpointing water pump damage that could lead to significant water losses. Wi-fi will also enable fire crews to run fire safety software on wireless laptops to plan their response to fires at specific buildings, measure fire hose distance, show building and roof layouts and send data to fire trucks en route to show what chemicals are stored in a building. “Additionally, the city’s health, electric and building inspectors can use wireless laptops to issue permits on site, saving time for developers and residents and speeding up permit fee collection,” Tull said. “Currently, we are about 50 percent deployed with wireless-read meters in Granbury,” Tull said. “Hopefully by the end of the year, we can go live partner did not respond to network performance problems as quickly as the city would have liked. In March 2007, the city bought the 10square-mile network for glenn, Superior, Thornton and Wheat Ridge. The CWC approach “creates a single permit application that streamlines the permitting and approval process for the 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. with automated meter reading. We really want to be about 75 percent installed before we go live.” The wi-fi network has served the city well. Various city departments have become dependent on the network’s reliability. Unfortunately, Granbury’s private $225,000 to maintain more control over its performance. The Granbury wireless network is now live with the city managing it and selling service to the public. “Be careful how you pick your partners,” Tull said. “Things that are a problem for you may not be a problem for the provider.” Regional wi-fi—Ten small to medium-sized towns in the Denver metro area are taking a creative approach to getting city-wide wi-fi. They are forming Colorado Wireless Communities, which will combine them into a single entity that can contract with a private company to bring wi-fi to all their communities. The communities are Arvada, Boulder, Broomfield, Golden, Lakewood, Louisville, Northvendor to obtain access to 10 cities’ rights of way,” said Christopher Puccio, Boulder’s information technology director, who is leading the initiative. CWC is in contract negotiations with the two top contenders, after narrowing the field from eight interested vendors. Contract negotiations should be complete by late fall, with network engineering and construction to follow. Then it should take about 12 to18 months to get the wireless network fully functioning in all 10 communities. The challenge is getting a private company interested in investing in the infrastructure to provide wireless service to a smaller community. Combining with nine other communities made the Maintenance Program FIXTURE ANALYZER KIT Test kit with special base adapter quickly identiﬁes system issue. EYE Ignitron™ LAMP Long life EYE Ignitron™ lamp with internal ignitor eliminates the HPS ﬁxture ignitor. REDUCED LIGHTING MAINTENANCE Identify and replace ﬁxtures nearing end-of-life that can cause costly return trips to the pole. Complete Billing Solutions for Utilities o Order Entry, Work Order and Billing for Video, Data and Voice Services o Automated Provisioning of FTTH Network and All Other Technologies o Use Your Existing Utility Billing System or ETI’s Optional Module o Proven Technology in over 100 Satisfied Customers 54 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2007 PUBLIC POWER

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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