Building a municipal wireless network in the Netherlands

Stratix Consulting has published a study for SURFNet on the feasibility of building and running a municipal wireless broadband network in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The report contains detailed information about the capital and operating costs of the network, as well as business models for sustaining it. This is the first comprehensive feasibility report I have come seen for the deployment of a citywide Wi-Fi network in a small, densely populated European city (population 283,000 out of which 60,000 are students; area: 95 square kilometers or 36 square miles), although the report addresses the deployment of a network to cover only 25 square kilometers or 10 square miles.

SURFnet is a network that connects research and higher education sites in the Netherlands. Its stakeholders are organised in the Stichting SURF. SURFnet’s community survey shows a need for outdoor wireless access. However, SURFnet community users are not willing to pay a lot of money for outdoor wireless services. Stratix found that for the city of Utrecht (which has a university and several colleges), a ubiquitous municipal wireless network would cost ‚Äö?ᬮ9.2 million over a 3-year period:

“There is no financial justification for creating such a network exclusively for the educational community. Acquiring and rental of access point locations is a large part of the total costs (28%). Such a municipal wireless network is only feasible with support of (local) government.”

The educational community of Utrecht cannot finance the network on its own, so it needs to work together with the local government. Stratix came up with a detailed breakdown of costs based upon the following assumptions:
- coverage over 25 square kilometers (10 square miles) (the area east of the A2 motorway, north of the A12 motorway and west of the A27 motorway);
- 25 wireless mesh access points per square kilometer will be required for outdoor coverage;
- for every 12 mesh nodes, a wired connection is required (line rental ‚Äö?Ñ?¨ for both aggregation and Internet uplink – under commercial conditions);
- sites need to be acquired/contracted under commercial conditions (accounting for nearly a third (28%) of the total cost).

Because almost one-third (28%) of the total cost goes to site acquisition and annual lease or rental, it is important to get the local government as a partner in rolling out the infrastructure (assuming local government is able to facilitate the sites for mounting wireless antennas).

Detail of the cumulative cost of the network over a 3-year period is 9.2 million Euros:

(1) Network hardware components (27%): 2,496,000 EUR
(2) Site acquisition and rental (28%): 2,656,000 EUR
(3) Line rental including Internet uplink (22%): 1,988,000 EUR
(4) Operations (13%): 1,199,000 EUR
(5) Planning, design, implementation (10%): 890,000 EUR

Download the report from here.