Cisco turns the municipal wireless market upside down
Analysis: At first glance, Cisco Systems has announced a major public safety applications initiative. But take a closer look, and you’ll discover that Cisco has rewritten its municipal broadband strategy from the ground up. Instead of focusing on mayors who have grand broadband dreams, Cisco and the rest of the industry increasingly are targeting municipal CIOs with specific mesh applications that extend existing IT infrastructures with new services.Analysis: At first glance, Cisco Systems has announced a major public safety applications initiative. But take a closer look, and you’ll discover that Cisco has rewritten its municipal broadband strategy from the ground up.
Instead of focusing on mayors who have grand broadband dreams, Cisco and the rest of the industry increasingly are targeting municipal CIOs with specific mesh applications that extend existing IT infrastructures with new services.
During a phone briefing, Cisco’s Morgan Wright (global industry solutions manager for public safety) and Joel Vincent (senior manager, outdoor wireless marketing) described the company’s commitment to municipal broadband. The discussion reinforced a strategy that Cisco insiders have been discussing since at least August.
For starters, Cisco is promoting applications as the driving force for municipal broadband. The networking giant realizes, however, that many municipalities and their IT partners are struggling to piece together hardware, software and services into complete, mesh-driven applications.
With that challenge in mind, Cisco is working more closely with specific hardware, software and service providers — including 3I Infotech and APS for public safety applications; and Accela, MobileFrame and Syclo for mobile worker and inspection applications — to accelerate municipal broadband application deployments. Cisco has also reached out to Intermec and Panasonic to ensure the applications can run on rugged notebooks and other mobile devices.
Still, this is more than a technology initiative. Cisco specifically launched these new solutions and partnerships at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference. The move was a clear sign that Cisco wants public safety leaders and their IT representatives to create pull for these solutions.
Also of note: For most Cisco executives, this week kicks off a long-anticipated showdown with Microsoft in the unified communications market. Cisco CEO John Chambers has predicted that Microsoft and Google will emerge as two of the networking company’s fiercest competitors.
But even as Microsoft officially jumped into the unified communications market today, Cisco diverted many of its marketing and sales resources to the municipal broadband sector — reinforcing the company’s commitment to the space.
What’s next? Watch for Cisco’s unified communications and municipal broadband initiatives to converge. Within a week, we hear, Cisco will announce that its unified communications infrastructure now offers enhanced support for smart phones, WiFi and cellular devices. Those mobile devices, in turn, could make ideal clients within municipal broadband networks.
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The change of strategy on how to execute a successful Muni WiFi is the key to the FIRST win. Maybe the initial disappointment of the last models was exactly what was needed to secure a promising future for Muni WiFi. We needed to slow the pace down, build favorable ROI, align with appropriate advocates in local /state governments and build one useful rollout out that could be a model moving forward. Sound tech companies with plenty of resources will succeed in leveraging this tremendous opportunity.
Cisco’s strategy is a “real world” look at who is still waiting for municipal mesh networks. My recent meetings have been with city CIOs, City Managers, Chief of Police and Fire Chiefs. I give them a presentation starting with the audio of the communication break down on 9/11/2001 and from there give them video fact statements (you can see them on anewnetwork.com) of how every year after wireless hybrid mesh networks were the only surviving networks in catastrophes.
It is shameful how long our public safety personnel have been waiting for survivable and interoperable wireless municipal networks. It is worse when we are given reminders like Hurricane Katrina and most recently the Minneapolis bridge collapse that there are immediate solutions to these problems. In 2002, I was the keynote speaker at the University of Tampa in a conference for first responders. I showed them the solutions (hybrid mesh to mobile mesh) and they directed me back to the politicians for approval. We all know what a waste of time that was.
I am glad we are now where the rubber meets the road. No more political hype. In a recent meeting with regional City Managers, Chief of Police and Fire Chiefs, I stated that I was sick and tired of seeing three radios devises on the belts of public safety officials. I was latter corrected by a Fire Chief saying they now have four radio devises. He then explained how he juggles all four devises in an emergency response.
All these radios cost money and are expensive band aids in trying to get a legacy emergency communication network to interoperate. That money could be better spent on a real known interoperable and survivable wireless communication solutions. It is time to give these people actually what they need. It is time for a new network.