MuniWireless

Recently, I had the honor of speaking to city managers across the state of Ohio presenting:  “Economic Development and Broadband – A Marriage Made in Heaven.”  The response to this presentation was overwhelming.  Here is a summary.

Wireless is, of course, about improving productivity through technical applications and human resource management.  But, how clear is the role that broadband and wireless play in creating and attracting jobs and tourism to today’s City Managers and Mayors?

Today’s economic development environment demands a focus on entrepreneurialism.  This should not surprise you, considering the growing shift in the academic world towards entrepreneurial curriculum and the global economic climate which is shifting towards information-based businesses.

If you take a look at history and the economic analysis of countless scholars, statistics document that technology has accelerated our productivity (much as wireless has for municipal workflow).  Behind this incredible shift are truly entrepreneurial spirits, often times students, who have invented companies like Facebook, and Microsoft and eBay.  From the imaginations of these and hundreds of other pioneers, we have witnessed a broadband revolution which is now moving into what can be deemed the next technical phase.  Perhaps, to some, it is known as the “last mile”.

But how do you, as a city official, incorporate a broadband or wireless entrepreneurial recipe into your community development efforts?  And what does broadband and wireless have to do with it?  I can best answer this question through an example:

In May of 2005, the Beta Strategy Group engaged with the City of Mayfield Village to develop a plan whereby the city’s fledgling commercial district on Beta Drive would be unified and repurposed through the creation of a technology park model to provide low-cost, high-quality office and incubation space for companies engaged in the development of technological products.

Our approach was to create a wireless broadband infrastructure which allows for extremely flexible, high performance, low-cost network connectivity to be deployed quickly, within a two-mile radius of the City’s primary communications tower (located in the town center).

With this infrastructure in place, Beta worked with the City to carry out a long-range strategy to deploy a range of wireless applications for pedestrian use (the center of town and recreation areas currently offer free WiFi access), municipal wireless applications (e.g., first responder and safety applications) as well as a platform for new network applications that will drive new economic development initiatives (e.g., technology park).

Beta Strategy and the City of Mayfield won an Innovation Zone Award.

We have engaged with over 100 communities over the past 60 days who are moving forward with their understanding about how a wireless infrastructure highway “on ramps” is a must have for growing jobs.  New private/public partnerships focused on fostering entrepreneurship are forming as we speak.

We encourage you to visit www.munisync.com for more information.