MuniWireless

The Manchester (UK) City Council wants to extend the Eastserve project’s wireless broadband network to cover the entire city. It has issued a public tender for a citywide wireless network. The deadline for submissions is 8 August 2008; the city will announce the winning bid on 25 August 2008. Go to the Manchester City website for more information about the wireless broadband project. If you just want to view the documents, I have posted here the invitation to tender and bidder’s pack which contains information about Eastserve, the existing wired and wireless infrastructure, and the city’s requirements.

Manchester began the Eastserve project in 2000 and set up a wireless broadband network in East Manchester to serve the community. There are 1600 households using the network today who pay up to £20 per month for broadband service (downstream speed: 2 Mbps). The lowest monthly subscription fee is £6.

The city council wants a long-term solution to maintain the current service and extend it throughout Manchester, including “regeneration areas”. According to the public tender documents, they are looking for a partner that can:

• continue to provide the Eastserve service offer in terms of accessible and affordable wireless broadband being available to residents in East Manchester;
• work in partnership with the City Council and its regeneration agencies and partners to develop and then implement a business plan for extending this service across all of the other regeneration areas with the aim of providing access for all local residents and businesses on a city-wide basis;
• Create a suitable delivery vehicle which would be an appropriate form of public-private partnership to initiate and sustain this extension of service;
• Provide IT Project Resource and Consultancy relating to deployed core technologies;
• Assist in development of “Green” standards for service deployment.