Municipal wireless pulling remote workers off expensive cellular networks

The ‘BlackBerry experience’ is driving community stakeholders to demand remote broadband access – but some Canadian cities are pulling their workers off of costly cellular networks and driving data over Wi-Fi or WiMAX. “It was the BlackBerry experience that piqued the business units’ interest in enabling the mobile workforce,” said Craig Stumpf, network architect for the City of Mississauga ON, during his presentation to the Optimum Broadband for Cities conference in Toronto last month. Stumpf explained that he is delivering on three pilot programs – two Wi-Fi mesh, and one WiMAX – for partners that include Mississauga and the City of Brampton, the Town of Caledon, the Region of Peel, as well colleges and hospitals. “Traffic, transit, fire and emergency, remote building monitoring, police – none of these are ‘ICT’ and yet they all need wireless,” said Stumpf, adding that his budget is about $10,000 to $15,000 per kilometre of Wi-Fi corridor. In Mississauga the IT department receives project funding from the external departments it serves so it had to cut back on its exposure to cellular-based devices. “Our BlackBerry exposure was killing us,” said Stumpf. “We had cut back 5%, but we still needed to replace or reduce. We’ve taken some cell phones away, we use some dual mode devices, and we also have Cisco Systems’ Wi-Fi phone for people who don’t go far.” Lynn Willenbring, CIO for of the City of Minneapolis, which has had one of North America’s highest profile municipal Wi-Fi projects, agrees that data costs on cell networks are prohibitive. “We couldn’t do this over a cellular network,” she said in conversation with Tech Media Reports. “That’s an expensive way to send data. We need access to parking meters, water meters, all kinds of things in public works. This network offers us lots of opportunities to save money.” The conference heard many presentations on how extending broadband supports economic development, with the conference chair, Greg Settles, suggesting that hybrid technologies are here to stay. “We have a resurgent interest in broadband because the US and Canadian governments are giving away lots of money,” Settles told Tech Media Reports, adding that weak business planning and unrealistic expectations that didn’t address real needs led to the failure of many municipal Wi-Fi projects. “They wanted to get networks built for free, and to get providers to pay. It was appealing but impractical. We need to be careful about being overly influenced by the hype that surrounds a particular network.” Settles gives the example of the City of Fredericton, which presented at the conference. The city’s Fred-eZone, which offers a free community-wide Wi-Fi network, is considered a success. “It’s the poster child for municipal broadband,” says Settles. “They got the customers first and aggregated – like a co-op." Mississauga took a similar approach, as did Minneapolis. “We brought in stakeholders early on,” says Willenbring. “The library board, the school board, parks and recreation, public housing, transit, airports. Then we had to look at the business model, and went for us as the anchor tenant – we purchase the service, and have no ownership or refresh funding.” However, Minneapolis has also had major challenges. “We didn’t expect to have to pay another million dollars for poles and towers,” says Willenbring. “Our light fixtures were fibreglass and not strong enough to hang the gear, and they also had no power during the day. We are also paying $1.25 million a year as part of our service agreement, which is too much.” Bridging the digital divide is a side benefit of the business model – not the main focus. “Digital inclusion was included in the contract,” says Willenbring, “with 5% of pre-tax profit going into an ‘inclusion fund’. Customers can get 1 to 3 megabits down at a competitive US$19.95 a month, with customer premise equipment available for purchase at US$80 or lease at US$5 a month. We now have 14,000 paying subscribers with word of mouth advertising.” Not surprisingly, Cogeco Cable, which picked up Toronto Hydro Telecom’s One Zone municipal Wi-Fi service when it bought the company last summer, was not at the conference. Cogeco has given up the wireless game to the cellular companies, which means a city like Toronto may have to piggy-back on some expensive networks if it wants data services for smart metering. But Settles warns cellular suffers from hype, too. “On the cellular side there was a lot of hype around 3G,” he says. “But it is too slow for a lot of things, and doesn’t penetrate well indoors. Cellular is not the panacea that it said it was.”

Municipal wireless pulling remote workers off expensive cellular networks

News | 07/06/2009 7:46 pm EDT

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