I feel a bit silly delivering this news somewhat late given that I live here in Europe, but I was at the Wireless Cannes conference last week and am only now catching up with my posts on Muniwireless.I feel a bit silly delivering this news somewhat late given that I live here in Europe, but I was at the Wireless Cannes conference last week and am only now catching up with my posts on Muniwireless.
Manchester, UK wants to provide free Wi-Fi access throughout the city (400 square miles, 2.2 million people). As far as I know, this is the largest announced municipal Wi-Fi project in Europe. According to the Times, the city council will invite companies to submit their plans by 8 January 2007. For more information go to the Manchester Digital Development Agency website.
Manchester has issued an RFI for the network – click here to download.
Meanwhile, Bristol (also in the UK) is expanding their existing network to cover other business areas, transport routes and low-income communities. The current 3-kilometer network attracts over 15,000 users a month. Bristol is one of the ten finalists in the national Digital Challenge. Bristol has engaged Cityspace, which deployed the initial pilot, to roll out the extended network.
They will continue to provide free wireless access to the public but also paid-for services to business. However, the primary reason for expanding the network is the city’s desire to use it for mobile office applications. They hope to improve service and efficiency in the following areas:
- Mobile communications and reporting for council service teams including parking attendants, food hygiene and trading standards inspectors, surveyors and engineers;
- “Nomadic” CCTV to address crime hotspots in the city;
- New community information, engagement and skills and training initiatives to provide new opportunities to people living in disadvantaged areas;
- Improvements to the city’s growing network of real-time passenger transport information services across the city.
Work and planning is underway on this second phase of the network, which is expected to take 12 weeks. This will allow for testing of the first council applications to begin in March 2007, once details of the agreement between the city council and Cityspace have been finalized.
The equipment vendor in this project is BelAir Networks.
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