After attending our recent conference in Dallas, Glenn Strachan, who spearheaded the world’s first country-wide WiFi network, Wireless Macedonia, offered some thoughts about the use of consultants for network deployments.After attending our recent conference in Dallas, Glenn Strachan (“strawn”), who spearheaded the world’s first country-wide WiFi network, Wireless Macedonia, offered some thoughts about the use of consultants for network deployments that I thought you’d find interesting.
gB
To determine the best business model for a municipality, a consultant familiar with MuniWireless initiatives and models should be brought in to work with the person selected to lead the effort. Together the project director and consultant examine all the current presumptions about potential cost savings for accuracy, and perhaps even find new applications the project director might not have known about. The consultant can work with the director to identify all the beneficiaries of the new applications, and help to gain consensus and support. The consultant should especially make certain that the director understands how digital solutions should be included in the overall plan for making a city wireless.
Most importantly, the consultant can help create a business model in support of the wireless implementation. While the most logical approach may be a public-private partnership between an Internet Service Provider and the city, there are other possibilities which must be examined before choosing the most appropriate approach for this effort. Finally, after performing all of the “discovery” work, the consultant can then help the director draft the request for proposals (RFP) or the request for information (RFI).
Once the responses to the RFP or RFI are received, the consultant can work with the director to review each response, making certain that each meets the needs of the city as defined with the RFP/RFI. Ultimately, the consultant will no longer be required – but his or her involvement in this process can be absolutely critical to the ultimate success of the project. While the MuniWireless movement has grown exponentially during the past four years, it is still a young industry, and cities are learning lessons as they go through this process. These lessons are being shared through word of mouth, writings posted on industry Web sites, and from the practical experiences of the early adopters. We see many cities moving forward ‚Äö?Ñ?¨ but the one insight that was repeated several times during the recent MuniWireless conference was that each city is unique, and that the movement toward a wireless initiative needs to well planned, discussed, and executed.
- Glenn Strachan
The comments are on the mark. Although many good projects have been started, few have been successfully completed. There are many good ideas among them that can be adapted to each community’s unique character and needs. The importance of public input should not be over looked in develping the plan – especially in more diverse commnunities with multiple jurisdictions like counties, regions, or states. Public input in an open forum provides the project champion with the opportunity to educate people and to appropriately set expectations, uncover issues and problems that need resolution, and also allows the input that creates supporters that feel they have a stake in the success of the wireless project.