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Sacramento MetroConnect
Location: USA
Abstract:
In June 2007, the Sacramento (CA) city council voted to approve the contract between the city and Sacramento MetroConnect, a consortium of four companies: Azulstar, Cisco, Intel, and Seakay. The contract was the result of a winning proposal, in which Azulstar will own and operate the wireless network, Cisco will provide the hardware, Intel will serve an advisory role on digital inclusion and technical aspects, and Seakay will oversee Digital Opportunity education programs. The free layer of the network will provide high-speed broadband access to the general public. Paid services and applications such as VoIP and video streaming will be supported by the network. Further, Azulstar will provide broadband-wireless applications for retail, health, government, public safety, tranportation, and education, with the capability to expand the range to include future applications. Sacramento MetroConnect's focus on digital inclusion will materialize in community programs led by Intel and Seakay. These will include economic development efforts, philanthropic funding solicitation, and digital inclusion programs for schools, small businesses, and underserved communities. The Sacramento MetroConnect project is a private, for-profit program. The free layer of broadband access will be supported by advertising and sponsorship, while subscriptions and advanced personal, business, and municipal applications will support the paid part of the network. A concept zone is expected in September 2007, with the remainder of the network beginning to roll out at the end of the year.
Related Items:
• IBM WebAdapt2Me Goes to College
• Sacramento Goes Wireless
• Curtis Gibbs, Senior Resource Dev. Officer, CRA/LA
Website:
Practitioner Name: Noa Eisenberg
Practitioner Tel: 646-729-6207
Practitioner E-mail: noa@azulstar.com
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Vendor Name 1: AZU
Vendor Title 1: Azulstar
Vendor Name 2: CISC
Vendor Title 2: Cisco
Vendor Name 3: IBM
Vendor Title 3: IBM
Vendor Name 4: INTL
Vendor Title 4: Intel
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San Francisco, CA
Location: USA
Abstract:
San Francisco has generated worldwide attention ever since EarthLink and partner Google won a bid to provide the city with an ubiquitous Wi-Fi infrastructure, through and ad-supported model, in part through a two-tiered advertising-based model supporting free public access. Chris Vein, Senior Technology Advisor to the Mayor of San Francisco and Executive Director of the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services reflected on the history of the project at the Digital Cities Convention in London, September 2006: "It was in October of 2004 that my boss, Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, put out a big audacious goal. He made a statement in his first State of the City address that said that every San Franciscan should have a computer and access to the Internet and no San Franciscan should be without access to free wireless-broadband service. "I happened to be in the audience that day, and I wasn’t in my current position, and I remember thinking, Oh, the poor devil who’s going to have make that promise a reality. And it turns out the next month that I became that person, and for the last two years I’ve been on an incredible journey in making what was a visionary statement — I don’t believe Mayor Newsom actually quite understood everything that was implied by that statement — but two years later, and quite a bit of work and publicity, we are at a stage of negotiating with EarthLink, Motorola and Tropos to provide ubiquitous access to all 49 square miles of the City and County of San Francisco."
Website: http://www.sfgov.org/site/tech_connect_page.asp?id=33899
Practitioner Name: Chris Vein
Practitioner Tel: 415-554-0890
Practitioner E-mail: teresa.galvis@sfgov.org
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Scottsburg, IN
Location: USA
Abstract:
Thirty miles north of Louisville, Kentucky, sits Scottsburg, Indiana — the town that broadband forgot. No matter how hard Scottsburg tried, it could not deliver connectivity to its local business and residents. Then, in 2001, its mayor, Bill Graham, learned that Scottsburg and Scott County were on the brink of an economic crisis. A local military supplier nearly lost a million-dollar contract because it couldn’t e-mail a proposal on time. A local car dealer and its 72 employees were about to leave town because mechanics couldn’t download service manuals. Mayor Graham and a small team jumped into action — even requesting a spectrum analysis on Christmas Eve. Within four months, the town had put in place a broadband-wireless infrastructure for businesses and residents alike at a tune of $385,000. Everything is managed locally, and the city does its own billing. Mayor Graham says: “Are we successful? We think so. We just wanted to take care of our folks in Scottsburg.”
Website:
Practitioner Name: Bill Graham
Practitioner Tel: 812 752 3169 (O)/ 4429 (H)/ 595-1139 (M)
Practitioner E-mail: myrgr@c3bb.com
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Vendor Name 1: WLESSCON
Vendor Title 1: Wireless Connections
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Seattle Broadband Task Force
Location: USA
Abstract:
In 2004, the City of Seattle commissioned a Citizens Task Force in to explore how the city’s assets could be used to create a broadband network. Individuals from the community and private sector met 13 times over 7 months to determine what to do with low-cost wireless. At the Local Stakeholders Briefing Session in Seattle, IT Director and Chief Technology Officer Bill Schrier elaborated on the Task Force’s findings. Schrier says that because the City of Seattle is already rich in Wi-Fi connectivity and mindful of heavy population growth projections over the next 40 years, it is putting fiber at the center of its planning. It has released an RFI for a fiber-to-the-home network “If you’ve got fiber and cable to every home and business, you can pop up Wi-Fi hotspots virtually wherever you want, and you can create that wireless cloud around the city relatively quickly,” Schrier said. “So that’s one reason we’re concentrating on fiber first, even though Wi-Fi or mobile access is also important.” Schrier identified five steps to broadband: —clarifying objectives —assessing the competition —assessing assets and market —getting elected officials’ decision and support —pursuing the goal The Task Force members identified the following user groups: —Consumers - triple-play, interactive gaming, two-way television, work/business at home —Bridging the Digital Divide —Economic Development - small businesses, spin-offs, collaboration, educated workforce —Public Safety - mobile, video, images —Public Purpose - government services, interaction with elected officials, education. And it summarized the “technology fit”: —DSL - short term, short cable, short life —Cable - seems on top now, won’t support future two way HDTV applications —Wi-Fi - interesting for mobile, not for TV, video, interference, expensive in wide area —Wi-Max - new, may work for mobile, wide area —Fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) - the real solution, expensive, 40+ year life with new electronics It also created a results statement: “Within a decade, all of Seattle will have affordable access to an interactive, open broadband network capable of supporting applications and services using integrated layers of voice, video and data with sufficient capacity to meet the ongoing information, communication and entertainment needs of the city’s citizens, businesses, institutions and municipal government.” It set a vision for this city to accomplish this over the next ten years to stay current and keep our cool factor with economic development Schrier said the city would determine what incentive private partners needed to invest here. Because we’ve got all these competing needs for public dollars, elected officials want to invest as little as possible in a broadband utility. “I’d love to change that, but there are competing priorities,” he said. “Hopefully, we can develop a franchise—one or more partnerships—to do fiber-to-the-home in the city.” The Task Force came up with the following requirements: —fiber-optic to every home and business; —provision it to allow multiple competing TV, video, telephone and data and Internet services; —network neutrality; —partner with private vendors and others to construct and operate Schrier added that the latter “could be a hard thing to get, because typically if somebody’s going to spend all the dollars to build out a service, they’re going to expect some exclusivity so that they can recoup that investment.”
Website: http://www.seattle.gov/btt/
Practitioner Name: Bill Schrier
Practitioner Tel: n/a
Practitioner E-mail: bill.schrier@seattle.gov
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Seattle Wi-Fi Pilot
Location: USA
Abstract:
For more than a year, the City of Seattle has been operating a Wi-Fi pilot project in its university district and in the south end of town (Columbia City), as well as in four downtown parks and city hall. The network has 17 access points, deployed primarily on light poles, and includes interior premise equipment at four different sites The goals of the pilot are economic development (to assist small businesses and increase purchases), to improve usage of the city’s Web resources, and to encourage mixed use of the parks to increase safety. The question of return on investment to the community, however, is an evolving one. This summer the city conducted its first evaluation of the technology and surveyed network users Since January 2006, the network has registered over 10,000 unique users (65,000 uses overall) with an average daily use of 130 individual users, including a combination of visitors and local residents. The survey revealed that half were customers, and just over a quarter were home users in the surrounding area. Some 10% were “other”—students, visiting scholars and people traveling on business. “We’ve seen a high percentage of first-timer users, about 1,200 per month,” said David Keyes, Seattle’s Chief Technology Manager Businesses When the city asked local businesses whether the network had helped them, just over half said it hadn’t made a difference, a quarter didn’t know, and a quarter said it had. In one district, however, almost 40% reported the network had made a difference. “To some extent, the jury is still out,” Keyes said For most businesses, the network is not replacing other Internet access right now. About one sixth of businesses use the network to conduct business, and it’s being used as a marketing tool. For example, realtors say their condos are “near the Wi-Fi zone.” For some businesses, Wi-Fi is not appropriate. “They don’t want WiFi or folks sitting there with laptops,” Keyes said. “Others are concerned with table turnover, and ask, Could they turn it off sometimes, too?” Customers From the customer perspective, the network was a contributing factor to using the business district and specific businesses, with three quarters saying Wi-Fi had encouraged them that day to go into specific businesses. “People are coming in, staying longer, spending more money in some cases, combining visits, telework, job searching—a whole variety of uses,” Keyes said. “There’s a climate that’s been developed around casual business meetings. I can hold my business meeting and make it a destination for conducting work.” Over half said it had saved them driving, which is a significant impact. About 10% said it would save driving in the future Content When given a choice, some 65% of users said they wanted local event information, and a little less wanted local business information, products and services. Interest in local government information and area maps was not as high. Only 6% said they didn’t want any content—just to surf the Web and access e-mail. The network did increase usage of Seattle.gov, especially pages on jobs and city services In conclusion, some 90% of businesses approved of continuing Seattle Wi-Fi. Not surprisingly, many users said to continue it as well A technical expectation has been indoor coverage—getting deeper into the cafes and bookstores. “But interestingly, only half expected indoor coverage,” Keyes said. Interference issues have arisen, and a number of users commented on coverage and reliability of the network in an uncontrolled open space. “There’s a big issue around user knowledge and expectation,” Keyes said. “People with a laptop can see Seattle Wi-Fi but can’t connect to it.”
Website: http://www.seattle.gov/html/citizen/wifi.htm
Practitioner Name: David Keyes
Practitioner Tel: n/a
Practitioner E-mail: communitytechnology@seattle.gov
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Silicon Valley Wireless
Location: USA
Abstract:
In September 2006, Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network, and the San Mateo County Telecommunications Authority (SAMCAT) announced, through its RFP process, that it had selected Silicon Valley Metro Connect (a collaboration of IBM, Cisco, Azulstar, and SeaKay) to build, own, and operate a broadband-wireless network for San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties as well as Fremont and Newark in Alameda County and Santa Cruz — a nearly 1,500-square-mile of coverage area. Working at the county level, and grouping together 42 local-government entities, the network will serve the 2.4 million residents of Silicon Valley through a wholesale model.
Website: http://www.jointventure.org/programs-initiatives/wirelesssiliconvalley/wireless.html
Practitioner Name: Brian Moura
Practitioner Tel: 650-802-4210
Practitioner E-mail: bmoura@cityofsancarlos.org
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St. Cloud, FL
Location: USA
Abstract:
In March 2006, the City of St. Cloud launched the first totally free citywide broadband-wireless network in the U.S., providing free access across 15 square miles to all citizens. The network is paid for with city economic development funds.
Website:
Practitioner Name: Glenn Sangiovanni
Practitioner Tel: 407-957-8401
Practitioner E-mail: gsangiovanni@ouc.com
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Vendor Name 1: MRI
Vendor Title 1: MRI
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St. Louis, MO
Location: USA
Abstract:
In early 2007, the City of St. Louis established a partnership with AT&T to provide broadband wireless access across 80 percent of the city with a year and the whole city by 2010. Users will get 20 free hours each month.
Website:
Practitioner Name: Michael Wise
Practitioner Tel: n/a
Practitioner E-mail: wisem@st.louiscity.com
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Suffolk/Nassau Counties, NY
Location: USA
Abstract:
The Counties of Suffolk and Nassau, New York are seeking a private partner or set of partners to build, own, and operate an outdoor wireless network across all of the populated areas in the two Counties that will cover over 2.7 million residents and approximately 750 square miles. While this network will be one of the largest of its kind in the US, the Counties expect it will be well utilized due to the demographics of the region. Preliminary surveys of residents indicate a high likelihood of use, and the Counties are fortunate that their households have the 9th highest level of disposable income across the US and rank 4th across the US for media household EBA (effective buying income). The Counties seek wireless broadband services that will benefit the public, the business community, visitors and County and local government authorities. To this end, the Counties have identified the following primary objectives for this endeavor. The Counties believe meeting these objectives will not only benefit all those who live and work on Long Island, but also the private partner or set of partners the Counties select through this RFP by fully utilizing the network for a wide variety of purposes.
Related Items:
• Unwire Portland
• Michigan Communities Meet on Broadband Wireless Progress
• Community Wi-Fi Revival Meeting in Riverside Draws Hundreds
• Sarbuland Khan
• Digital Inclusion Forum Inaugural Meeting
Website: http://www.co.suffolk.ny.us/wireless/wireless.html
Practitioner Name: Steve Levy
Practitioner Tel: n/a
Practitioner E-mail: wireless@suffolkcountyny.gov
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Tempe, AZ
Location: USA
Abstract:
Website: http://tempe.gov
Practitioner Name:
Practitioner Tel:
Practitioner E-mail:
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