MuniWireless

One important driver for public broadband networks is the ability to support a broad range of mobile devices. Municipalities typically see two major benefits in catering to such activity. The first is to allow citizens to use their own mobile devices, either in hotspot areas or freely roaming around a city. The second is that public workers can perform work such as building inspection, completing forms and reports onsite, and avoiding both the need to return to their offices and the usage costs charged by traditional cellular carriers.

Laptop computers were initially – and still are – the largest mobile device consumers of public bandwidth. Jonathan Baltuch, president of MRI, which has served as a consultant on an Ocean City, N.J., wireless plan, believes that 95 percent of the devices using public broadband networks are laptop or stationary computers, and that other mobile devices constitute only five percent of network traffic. But he also believes those numbers will be reversed in just a few years’ time.

In fact, network traffic consumed by users of devices like the Apple iPod continues to grow dramatically. In January 2008, The New York Times reported on a holiday surge in Internet traffic by users of the iPod – a device with only 2% market share – surpassing that of Symbian smartphones, used by nearly two thirds of the market. This kind of Internet usage by handheld devices is likely to rise unabated, driven in large part by handheld devices like the iPod with usable Web browsers and support for WiFi networks. Much of the impetus comes from cost savings: Internet access and even phone calls from WiFi devices are far cheaper than through traditional cellular networks, which use proprietary approaches to provide Internet access to compatible mobile phones.

Another reason for using industry-standard schemes like WiFi for digital devices accessing public wireless networks is that they allow both residents and city workers to use a broad range of off-the-shelf products, saving the cost of using proprietary hardware and per-minute charges from traditional cellular networks. This increases the amount of innovation that’s possible for users of the network, and reduces the cost of any software development done by a city to provide access to back-end applications.

Beyond WiFi-enabled smartphones, other handheld devices with built-in WiFi are also gaining in popularity. PDAs, Personal Digital Assistants, are increasingly including both WiFi chipsets and the ability to plug in headsets with microphones, allowing users to make phone calls as easily as with a smartphone. Even camera manufacturers are getting into the act, with devices such as the Kodak EasyShare-One camera supporting WiFi for direct uploads to photo-sharing sites.

Yet despite the opportunity to support citizen devices on municipal wireless networks, a Forrester Research report states that only 5% of WiFi users have used a mobile device in an outdoor space. Forrester’s takeaway is that municipalities need to do more to teach citizens about the advantages of using their networks, a task that will become even more important as handheld devices begin to supplant laptops for a variety of computing and communication needs.

Much less education is required, however, for users such as police, fire and other safety workers. Laptops and other digital devices in squad cars and fire engines provide real-time information and communication that was previously possible only by using traditional cellular networks, significantly limited by the lack of true broadband Internet access. But the success of mobile computers in public safety initiatives demonstrates the rapidly rising value of access for digital devices through municipal wireless networks.