Texas town shares secrets for a successful municipal wireless network

Applications that make city operations cheaper to run and more efficient are critical factors in making municipal wireless networks sustainable, assuming you can come up with the cash to build and sustain the network, a municipal manager from Corpus Christi TX told delegates attending the Strategy Institute's 2nd Annual Municipal Wireless Summit in Toronto this month. The southern Texas city decided to build a muni-wireless network after a municipal employee was attacked by a dog while trying to read a water meter. Officials determined that wirelessly enabled automated meter reading would reduce the risk to city employees while saving the municipality money. George Noe, Corpus Christi's city manager, said the scope of a wireless network and the objectives of a municipality determine the viability of that network and the need to partner with the private sector. "We started out with this as a municipal program to provide municipal services," said Noe, in an interview with Report on Wireless. "That is totally viable and can be justified with productivity improvements and savings of the municipality without having to go to a private sector partner." However, a closer financial evaluation revealed the city would have to create a new unit of local government to maintain and operate the network - a costly proposition. As a result, Corpus Christi approached EarthLink Municipal Networks about buying the network, which it did for US$5.2 million last spring. As well, EarthLink and Corpus Christi entered into a franchise agreement under which EarthLink would provide residents and businesses with Wi-Fi Internet service. Residential access is priced at US$20 per month. The sale of the network didn't solve all of the city's problems though. It needed more money to develop applications for services such as healthcare, education, and local ecommerce. Eventually, Corpus Christi secured funding from the US Department of Homeland Security to develop wireless applications for emergency responders including hospitals and ambulances. The city also received funding from private foundations and firms such as Dell for educational applications. Corpus Christi recently completed a pilot project that made wireless broadband available throughout a local school, equipping students and teachers with laptops. If successful, the city will look at expanding wireless applications throughout the school district, according to Noe. " have provided us with the opportunity to demonstrate the value and productivity associated with these technologies," said Noe. "We can make the case to parents that they can be helping one child with their homework on the laptop while they wait in their car for another child who is having a swimming lesson." The wireless network was intentionally designed to address the digital divide and be digitally inclusive, noted Noe. In keeping with that principle, the municipal portal is chock full of content. Visitors can access information about community events, school districts, or pay a utility bill from their home, work or from hotspot kiosks located in museums, public libraries, community centres, senior centres, and recreational facilities. Even with adequate financing for network rollout and applications development, an anchor tenant is considered essential for the long-term survival and robustness of the network. In most cases, a municipality agrees to be that anchor to ensure a customer base for a vendor. "Having an anchor tenancy relationship is going to be important," said Noe. "You need some stability for the vendor to be able to justify their investment. The experience of other providers is that advertising revenues do not prove to be substantial enough to justify the capital investment as well as what are ongoing refreshment costs to keep the network state-of-the-art over the long term. That is difficult without having a partnership with the municipality. "We have learned that you can't get something for nothing," he said. "Ad revenues and revenues from subscriber services are not enough to have the kind of return on investment that they want." Noe noted that anchor tenancy does not have to take the form of a one-to-one relationship, but can be a many-to-one relationship: in the same way that a shopping mall has many tenants, a service provider can have a number of core clients. There have been growing pains along the way, but the municipality is optimistic about the utility of the network in serving myriad constituencies in the city, as well as the financial feasibility to update the network technology.

Texas town shares secrets for a successful municipal wireless network

News | 02/11/2008 12:44 pm EST

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Reuse & Permissions

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us