Comments on: Guest Commentary: Grande Prairie, Alberta business case for municipal wireless

By: Rory Conaway

Rory Conaway — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:06:19 +0000

Baxter, I haven’t seen anyone turned down. I would suspect you made a mistake in the filing. It’s kind of tricky the first time. However, there are many options out there in addition to 4.9GHz if that is truly the case. Call the FCC. They are easy to talk to and very helpful.

Gregg, the utility provider is the best option of course but not the only option. Keep in mind traffic lights which the city owns, buildings, and even residential options at worst case. Keep your capex down and look to alternative solutions. For example, we needed an AP to run several days without power. Instead of solar, we came up with a battery/charger solution which was less than $800 instead of the $4K-$5K solutions we were looking at.

By: baxter

baxter — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:03:42 +0000

we are a small municipality that applied for 4.9 license but were turned down. We would like to reapply as we think this is important for our public safety, what can you suggest we do?

By: Gregg

Gregg — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:56:51 +0000

Its good to see that you used such a well thought out approach to this. Too often we hear of disaster in this space because we get sold on the promises by vendors.

We have been struggling with our deployment, because, unlike you, we didn’t take the time to negotiate with our utility provider. Would like to hear more about how you arrived at the right approach so we can be better prepared in the future.