St. Petersburg turns from EarthLink to public safety
Another EarthLink muni Wi-Fi deal has fallen by the wayside. The company no longer plans to deploy a $7 million 60 square mile free municipal network for St. Petersburg, Fla. but civic-minded leaders there have not given up on muni wireless. They’re already investigating a public safety model.Another EarthLink muni Wi-Fi deal has fallen by the wayside. The company no longer plans to deploy a $7 million 60 square mile free municipal network for St. Petersburg, Fla.
This would fall in the non-news news category.Announcements of deployments that EarthLink is backing away from have been trickling in all week and we’ll no doubt hear of more.
But civic-minded leaders in St. Petersburg are still commited to muni wireless. A non-profit model pegged to public safety is emerging.
Larry Karisny, a proponent of community networks plans to test a concept for beach communities where wireless applications would be deployed to improve traffic flow and enhance emergency response services. Excess capacity could be made available to subscribers. The public sector would provide necessary equipment while the private sector would support the operation with advertising, subscription sales, and “other enterprise service models.”
Click here to read the story in the St. Petersburg Times.
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I appreciate the recognition of St. Petersburg’s situation which many other municipals will be facing with EarthLink‚Äôs bail out. As Director of an organization focusing on municipal wireless networks and applications called ProjectSafety in the St. Petersburg, I have spent four years promoting a multi use public/private municipal wireless technology and business model we call Community Network Integration (CNI).
The CNI network technology design offers a migration path to a multi-use mobile mesh wireless network supporting public safety primary access with plenty of space for commercial access. The business model allows multiple levels of public and private community network participation which gives the needed critical mass for the municipal wireless system to operate and also be economically sound. The old subscription only model is not enough which is why EarthLink is backing out. For municipal wireless to work, everyone needs to participate.
One of the best ways I can explain the CNI model is to tell what was said in an invitation only CIO round table I attended in the first MuniWireless Silicon Valley Conference in Santa Clara. Every City CIO had their own reason for wanting to deploy a municipal wireless network. Chicago wanted to support small business. Atlanta wanted to stimulate economic development. Phoenix was focusing on supporting all municipal workers including public safety. So who was right? Who has the best reason to deploy a municipal wireless network? The answer was that they were all right.
In a conversation I had with Peter Marcotullio, Director of Business Development for Stanford Research University, he said that SRI projects that the local wireless Internet will be many times larger in use than today’s current Internet. Municipal wireless networks are really just the local wireless Internet and we are just now beginning to scratch the surface of the potential uses and benefits of these network services.
So what are we missing? We need to get beyond Mayoral and Corporate hype and to the real participatory public and private community stakeholders of municipal wireless. It should not be one organization bearing the burden of network costs but all local citizens, government and business organizations working together. These needed municipal wireless networks are proving themselves every day. We just need more community education and participation to make then economically feasible. Actually we are already there.
I completely agree with the Tony Tull, IT director of Granbury, Texas comment. There is no bigger bang to the municipal buck than these new municipal wireless networks. In times with big upward spikes in local taxes and a need to control increasing municipal costs, these networks offer just what local governments and their constituents need. I could go on with what wireless sensors, geo smart radios and indestructible mobile mesh designs will offer in safety, security and economic development for communities; but let’s stop here for now. It is time to take a breath and realize the current EarthLink hiccup is nothing. Proven muniwireless networks and applications are moving forward today and the best still yet to come.