Comments on: Tax rollbacks could endanger city Wi-Fi

By: mark

mark — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 03:14:59 +0000

What lengths politicians go to to justify those telco/cableco campaign donations. Shut down, delay or cripple the service and the lolly rolls in.

The following article defines the actual cost of service at $30 one time and $1 a month.

http://www.muniwireless.com/article/articleview/5785/1/4/

Considering muniwireless should allow cellular and telephone service using a SIP service or Skype as well as internet, the average user should save almost $100 a month, for the price of a $30 up front payment.

A municipal government can overlay the wireless network with a combined cat6/fiber/powerline networks running up to 1 GigE at an additional $100 one time charge. This is especially effective with apartment/business complexes. Municipal meter reading equipment,in its simplest form a web cam, works very well with wired systems.

Myself I’d be happy to pay a $200 service charge so I could get 1 GigE service and save $100 a month.

The problem lies with corrupt municipal politicians who trade their oath of office for a few bucks in campaign donations.

By: Tom Elliott

Tom Elliott — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 16:34:28 +0000

I’m confused. The MuniWireless story in early March and comments by the project consultant suggested fairly strongly that St Cloud’s operating costs were being paid for through municipal savings. (Tuesday, Mar 6, 2007 a 2:30 pm Jonathan Baltuch says:
The Capital expense was funded through the local economic development fund. The annual operational expenses are funded through the internal savings to City operations, which exceed the annual cost of operations.

This story suggests just the opposite: ‘The city, she [Mayor Hart] said, has not made extensive use of the network to support city services although it is testing public safety applications .”If they can save us some money, it would be wonderful.” ‘

Of course, even if St Cloud is breaking even, a tax rollback would still be a problem, but most recent story suggests that operating costs are not in fact being offset by municipal savings. Or am I missing something here?

By: Charles Hewitt

Charles Hewitt — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 19:54:06 +0000

Here in Providence, as in Riverside, CA, we are focusing on reducing costs and enhancing city services: first, public safety and later, public works and building code enforcement. ‚ÄúThe most fundamental responsibility of government is the safety of our residents,‚Äù says our Mayor, David Cicilline, and the development and application of the city’s border-to-border, mobile broadband data network aligns with this priority. Although the network has been operational for less than a year, the police department already views it as an essential element of the municipal infrastructure.

Providence has no plans to use this network to facilitate public access. This was a decision we made early in the program, primarily because we needed to expedite the availability of the network to support public safety. We wished to avoid stirring up the many constituencies that would need to be heard if we included public access in the mix. In addition, we knew we were unqualfied to run such a business. Although the idea might be popular with a large bloc of voters, the actual execution might well be a different story.

We now know, based on our experience to date, several things. First, there has been no political backlash because the leaders chose to duck the digital inclusion issue and concentrate on delivering the primary mission of government. Second, operating this network is a challenge even with a small, closed group of demanding users, never mind several thousand constituents. Third, the impact on city operations grabs no headlines but is truly impressive nevertheless.

The public expects local government to operate efficiently and to be as reliable and easy to use as an ATM. If the government promises low-cost broadband public access, whether provided directly or through a third party, the service level had better be at least as good as what the local cell phone company provides. Failure to provide responsive, effective tech support when things go wrong will quickly alienate the customer, and addressing the failure will seriously distract government leaders from assuring provision of services that everyone views as essential.