Chicago not giving up on muni wireless
Chicago suspended plans for a city-wide Wi-Fi network to address the digital divide after EarthLink backed away from the muni market. But the city has not given up on muni wireless. Instead, it has turned its attention to providing wireless applications for city services, specifically, public safety.
Chicago suspended plans for a city-wide Wi-Fi network to address the digital divide after EarthLink backed away from the muni market. But the city has not given up on muni wireless. Instead, it has turned its attention to providing wireless applications for city services, specifically, public safety.
This week the city announced plans to work with IBM, Firetide and Genetec to deploy a public safety Wi-Fi network to conduct video surveillance around
the city.
The city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications plans to tie the wireless network to a fiber optic backbone to convey real-time images to a central office. The system could be used for everything from monitoring traffic flow to zooming in on the license plates of traffic offenders to surveillance and analysis of images for homeland security purposes.
Click here to read Firetide’s press release.
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That’s encouraging news! None of these City’s should give up. Re-evaluate…sure, but not give up.
Keep up the good work guys.
Laz
I think we are at last seeing that the municipal wireless information highway is the highway with public safety as its first priority. There are cars coming of the assembly line today that are looking for information from wireless sensors. An organization called ITS America is focusing on the use of intelligent highway devises with a goal of “0” collision. Following are the shocking societal implications of not deploying intelligence on our highways in which mobile mesh would be a big part in supporting:
Annual Safety Impacts
42,000 lives lost
3,000,000 Injuries
$230 billion in medical costs
Traffic
$ 6 billion in personal hours lost per year
$ 80 billion in lost wages and wasted fuel
20-30% more roads built ($280 billion ITS America)
Homeland Security
Goods monitoring
Oil dependency
Environment
Quality of living
My hat off to Chicago CIO, Hardik Bhatt (Andy) and company for creatively finding a way to move forward. With the information above and the needed services still not supporting public safety, I think we need to realistically start making some decisions. Frankly, I think there will soon be national mandates forcing cities to start using the technologies that will address these serious safety problems. Yes I said a mandate in deploying municipal wireless networks for highway safety and public security. So is municipal wireless going away? I see just the opposite.
Don’t forget the spin off benefits. Reduction in crime! Reduction in traffic! Reduction in gas consumption! Reduction in work driving time! Oh yaw, it might save my life and maybe a fireman or two! And the hidden benefits to small business that Andy stated in an interview with First Business Morning News in Chicago.
I am Director in an organization called ProjectSafety focusing on municipal wireless public safety and transportation applications. I am also a Director in an organization called SmarTown which focuses on location based advertising supporting municipal wireless applications. There seems to be recurring articles in MuniWireless.com that are repeating the same successful business models. Public safety and advertising. My organizations got it a long time ago and they keep trying to fight the good fight with other municipal wireless professionals. We get it. We just need our politicians to get it. Keep pushing forward Chicago. We are almost there.
Does anyone know if the city will own and operate this themselves or is IBM running the system and charging Chicago for the service?