MuniWireless » Public Safety

Wireless video surveillance gains popularity, but it is effective?

Esme Vos — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:00:21 +0000

I don’t know whether to be thrilled or appalled every time I read (or post articles) about the growing popularity of wireless video surveillance in our cities. Yes, police officers now have additional ways to catch nasty people. But the growing need for these surveillance cameras is disturbing in itself and says that we are living in an increasingly lawless, violent society. What next — walled cities with electronic moats to keep out the undesirables?

Back to the story. Buffalo, New York is one of the US cities that has installed wireless video surveillance and it appears to be quite popular even among residents. In May 2007, Buffalo issued an RFP for a municipal wireless network and security cameras. The city paid $3 million for the wireless camera network and feels it is money well spent. The scalability of the network is one of its most attractive features (which leads one to ask, what happens when there are cameras everywhere watching everything). Buffalo is not alone in its love affair with video surveillance.

Recently I interviewed Lt. Tony Crawford of the Dallas Police Department about the city’s network of wireless video surveillance cameras (read the interview here). What surprised me was this: I thought that police officers would be very excited about these cameras but that’s not the case. They were skeptical about the cameras’ ability to help, but later on, when they realized that the cameras did not unduly disrupt their set ways of policing, they dropped their opposition. The department is also sensitive to privacy concerns of residents in the areas where they have installed the cameras so that they have designed them not to pan up to the windows of apartment buildings.

Meanwhile in the UK, police say that CCTV has been a fiasco: only 3% of crimes have been solved through CCTV.

In the meantime, VideoIQ, a video surveillance company, is getting $10 million in venture capital funding.

Post your thoughts below.

Coshocton County, Ohio issues RFP for wireless broadband network

Esme Vos — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:05:57 +0000

Coshocton County, Ohio has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the construction of a wireless broadband network to serve businesses, residents, and specified County owned facilities throughout the county. The primary goal of this RFP is to find a provider that can deliver wireless broadband access to parts of the county that do not have broadband. In addition, the county will use the network for its own operations.

Proposals should be submitted to Coshocton County Commissioners Office, 401 ½ Main St, Coshocton, OH 43812. Deadline for submitting proposals to Coshocton County offices is Friday, August 1, 2008 at 3:00 PM local time. Bid packages can be picked up during regular business hours at 401 ½ Main St, Coshocton, OH 43812 or at the Columbus offices of SZD Whiteboard, 250 West Street, Columbus, Oh. 43215. Ask for Jeff Gamrath.

Download the Coshocton RFP (in PDF format) from Muniwireless.

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NOTE: You can join the Muniwireless RFP Alerts service by emailing us at info[at]muniwireless.com. We will send you an email with the RFP notice or documents as soon as they come in.

Girona, Spain builds citywide Wi-Fi network for municipal use

Esme Vos — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:59:38 +0000

Girona, Spain is deploying a citywide Wi-Fi network for municipal applications. At present, the network is running in the Can Gibert del Pla and Santa Eugenia neighborhoods, but it is being expanded to cover the entire city (13 square kilometers).

The cost of the project will be about 1,000,000 €. This amount includes not only the deployment of the network nodes, but also some applications running on it. The network is still in a pilot phase, operated by the municipal IT services for internal uses. Girona’s municipal IT services will operate the network. No public access is allowed at this time, but studies are underway about how the municipality can benefit the community and visitors without competing with private Internet service providers.

The network is currently used by the police for video surveillance of municipal buildings and public areas. Local government workers and students in neighborhood schools are also using the network. The city wants to bring wireless connectivity to disadvantaged communities. Girona is using equipment from Tropos Networks; the systems integrator is Neomedia. According to the press release, other planned uses for the network are: mobile police communications and information access via PDAs and laptops; centralized traffic management and monitoring of public transit vehicles; parking monitoring and management; centralized water control for public gardens; and real-time information for tourists to access on PDAs around town.The City and Province of Girona and the Catalan government are paying for the deployment and operation of the network.

Read press release here.

Statesboro, Georgia issues RFP for citywide wireless network

Esme Vos — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:50:54 +0000

Statesboro, Georgia has issued a Request for Proposals, seeking an ISP to build and operate a citywide wireless network for educational, residential, commercial, municipal and public safety use. Initially the network will be used primarily for public safety, remote work order management, Digital Inclusion, residential and student Internet access.

According to the RFP, the city “prefers to own the network infrastructure, since it intends to pay for the cost of the infrastructure, using the grant that it received from the State of Georgia’s Wireless Communities Georgia (WCG) program as well as matching funds and additional budgetary money. However, it will consider proposals that include other options in terms of network ownership. The City expects that in exchange for this contribution that it will not be charged for Internet service plans for its municipal employees.”

Statesboro is a city of 12.5 square miles and approximately 26,000 people. There are 20,000 students in the city from Georgia Southern University and Ogeechee Technical College. Read the results of the broadband survey conducted among the students of Georgia Southern (based on 1200 responses). A slim majority want free Wi-Fi but of those willing to pay, $10 per month is the maximum. The students say will use the network to play games, do homework (yeah, right) and visit Facebook (that’s more like it).

To view the RFP and other supporting documents, go to:

www.sboro.net/financeadmin/mwn_rfp.htm#files

Zhone offers telco-grade muni Wi-Fi solution

Esme Vos — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 06:50:23 +0000

Just when you thought everyone’s given up on municipal wireless networks, here comes Zhone Technologies with “high capacity, multi-service” metro Wi-Fi equipment (called SkyZhone) which uses 802.11n, MIMO and best of all, integrated DSL backhaul and line powering. This means you can install a SkyZhone access point anywhere there is a DSL line, no separate power line needed. SkyZhone comes in standalone or combined configurations using the 2.4 GHz and 4.9 GHz frequencies so it can be used for consumer, municipal and public safety applications.

I spoke to Steven Glapa, VP Marketing, and Marty Hahnfeld (Director, Marketing and former executive at Skypilot) last week about SkyZhone. I asked them why they were entering the supposedly moribund muni Wi-Fi market. Glapa and Hahnfeld told me that SkyZhone is an extension of the products that they are already selling to their (mostly) telecom customers. For example, a wireline operator can use SkyZhone to extend the reach of its wired network – wirelessly – and get new customers for its wireless service or bundle that service with its existing DSL offering.

Zhone is convinced that the SkyZhone product will not only improve the reach and reliability of wireless networks (because it uses 802.11n and MIMO), but make it much easier and cheaper to deploy them since the access points get their electric power from the DSL line.

Zhone has been publicly traded for many years now and its customer base consists mostly of network operators and telcos (incumbent operators outside the US, tier 2 and tier 3 operators in the US). Most of their revenues come from outside the US; the largest growth in their business is in the Middle East, Central and Latin America.

Recently, ACD.net, mid-Michigan’s largest independent ISP, chose SkyZhone for its networks in Lansing and Springfield, Michigan. According to the press release, ACD.net has deployed a multi-use network for public safety using 4.9 GHz and public access in the 2.4GHz band in Lansing. In neighboring Springfield, ACD.net is providing Internet access at subsidized rates for residents in a 6 square mile portion of the city.

Craven County, North Carolina goes wireless: rural Wi-Fi connects schools, towns

Esme Vos — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:51:32 +0000

Craven County, North Carolina (pop. 95,000) is deploying a wireless broadband network that will initially connect five schools in rural areas. It will also be used for the police and fire departments. Recently, the county installed a fiber optic network but it does not reach all communities. As a result, they will also use wireless to connect those towns without fiber. Craven County has hired Windchannel to deploy the network.

Deploying wireless broadband networks makes sense in a lot of rural counties that telecom and cable operators have ignored. Many of these rural networks use pre-WiMAX, Wi-Fi, fiber and some DSL for the network. Unlike large cities which have cable and DSL service, many rural communities have to go the DIY route and set up their own networks and there’s such pent-up demand that they have no trouble getting customers who are willing to pay more than what people in cities usually pay for Internet access. Indeed, this is where much of the growth in municipal and county wireless will occur in the next few years.

Oklahoma City rolls out world’s largest muni Wi-Fi mesh network

Esme Vos — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:30:33 +0000

On June 3, 2008 Oklahoma City is launching what it claims to be the largest city-owned municipal Wi-Fi mesh network in the world. The network, which went live in September 2006 and has been improved and expanded since that time, will be used only for public safety and municipal applications; it is not open to the public for Internet access.

The city paid $5 million for the network out of public safety capital sales tax and city capital improvement funds. The network consists of 1100 mesh nodes from Tropos Networks which are installed on siren towers, buildings and traffic lights; 900 mobile nodes are installed in city vehicles, allowing city workers to communicate with the mounted Wi-Fi mesh nodes and extend the coverage area. The city will add more nodes when needed.

I spoke to Mark Meier, IT director of Oklahoma City and he says that the network covers 555 square miles with 95 percent coverage in urban areas and 95 percent coverage on main roads. Police officers now have better access to crime databases in real time: they can download photos and file reports in the field. They can also connect to the 300 video surveillance cameras that are installed throughout the city. City inspectors have been using Wi-Fi enabled devices to streamline the review and processing of construction inspections and permits. The fire department will use the network so that they have the most recent information about locations before proceeding to a fire or accident (e.g. site maps, building floor plans, hazardous materials information). Eventually other city departments (public works, utilities) will use the network. Approximately 1200 people use the network everyday.

When I asked Meier what were the biggest surprises, he says he is impressed most by how well the network actually works. One can sit in a police car traveling at 40 miles per hour and get a continuous video feed from the surveillance cameras. He also says that the network was much more complicated to set up because so many variables were at play.

Open to the public anytime soon?

I asked if they would ever open up the network for public access and Meier replied that in 2006, they issued an RFP for the public access portion, but no one responded. That’s probably because the city wanted the provider to pay for all of the costs of the deployment with only $150,000 in city contribution. Click here to see my detailed post on the Oklahoma City RFP.

The trend in municipal wireless broadband is definitely moving towards either a mixed use (public access plus municipal applications as in Cambria County, Allegany County, Minneapolis and Riverside, California) or municipal use only (Corpus Christi and now Oklahoma City).

Below is the map of Oklahoma City showing the network coverage. The area within the blue lines is the urban core, where there is 95 percent coverage. The red lines denote the main line roads where there is 95 percent coverage.

CLARIFICATION AND UPDATE (8 July 2008):

Mark Meier sent me an email in response to Dan Stuart’s comment below and to my erroneous statement regarding the $150,000 chamber of commerce RFP:

Few items first, I can assure you that the 95% coverage rates quoted are accurate. We have very precise testing demonstrating that level of coverage. Tropos was required to actually test multiple times to meet the level required. As noted, the minimum was 512 K to be considered a successful test.

The “magic” is the 4210 mobile router. We have repeatedly pointed that out in every presentation we have made. The 95% coverage is at street level with a 4210 mobile router. I have attached three slides I have
used in virtually every presentation I make, hopefully they will clarify this issue.

To me the question is the essence of the WIFI “failures” that I have heard about. Failure to produce specific goals. Failure to establish reasonable expectations. Failure to develop a methodology to verify the
expectations were met. Failure to identify a sustainable support and funding structure.

The successful implementations I have seen are those that clearly identified a specific goal and ensured the system met those goals. I count ours as one of those. We designed our system to meet our goals at
a specific price point, which it continues to do with great aplomb. While it may not meet the expectations and vision of someone with a different set of goals, it has and continues to be a very successful model to build on for us and our needs. Which is actually the point, right?

One other note. You have mixed the RFPs up. You mention that we only offered $150,000 in City Contribution, which was actually a Chamber of Commerce proposal to build a new system. It was not the City’s RFP, which came about a year later after Earthlink made the request to buy, partner or manage our system in response to the Chamber’s RFP. I would personally attribute the failed response to the City’s RFP to Earthlink’s presence that made it seem ineffective for anyone else to propose.

And by the way, even for the Chamber’s RFP the original $150,000 was to provide a limited build out of the downtown area only.

Southlake, Texas uses Wi-Fi for video surveillance

Esme Vos — Sat, 31 May 2008 13:47:10 +0000

Southlake, a suburb of Dallas, Texas, is also using Wi-Fi for video surveillance in its downtown area. They are using equipment from Bridgwave Communications; the systems integrator is Redmoon, a wireless ISP based in Plano, Texas. Wireless video surveillance is one of the most sought-after applications among cities. However, as many UK cities have discovered, it’s not enough to put up cameras. You need people to monitor the images and do something about them to make it effective in fighting crime and arresting suspects.

Read my interview with Lt. Tony Crawford of the Dallas Police Department:

Dallas police wireless cameras tackle crime: an interview with Lt. Tony Crawford

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

brademond — Wed, 28 May 2008 07:05:51 +0000

About Grande Prairie

The fabric of this community which is located 450 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, Alberta is a fusion of pioneer spirit and new energy fuelled by rapid growth. Grande Prairie’s population grew by almost 30 per cent over the five years before the 2006 federal census, which recorded this city as the second fastest growing in Alberta. This growth put Grande Prairie third among mid-sized urban centres in Canada. The municipal census during 2007 verified that the population has surpassed the 50,000 resident mark. With about three quarters of the residents under the age of 45, Grande Prairie is a vibrant community where people are eager to see the municipality progress even further.

The local economy is driven by oil and gas, forestry, agriculture, and its location as the regional retail centre for about 250,000 area residents. Grande Prairie is also the hub for government in north western Alberta.

Grande Prairie is a Smart City, with a modern and technologically advanced infrastructure to meet the demands of a growing, dynamic community. Partnerships with other municipalities and public and private agencies accelerate the City’s progress in the information age and create tremendous economic development opportunities and growth.

The Situation and Guiding Principles

The municipality of Grande Prairie continually strives to improve efficiency in delivery of its services and enhance the use of applications by its various agencies such as fire department, public works, assessment, inspections and the regional utilities corporation. The City looks at new technologies as a means to improve the delivery of such services by utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS), work order, inspection and building assessment systems. In addition, it has faced an increasing young and tech savvy population with an entrepreneurial attitude that has become a driving force in the City’s economic growth.

The above business and demographic environment puts pressure on the City to seek ways to extend these services to a growing community including new and remote facilities and offices, using a wireless technology platform. For this purpose, the City decided to conduct a feasibility study for a citywide community broadband wireless network in conjunction with KAZAM Technologies – a management consulting firm specialized in wireless and broadband communications.

The City had been previously approached by the vendor community to gain access to rights of way for its facilities and buildings. However, there were concerns vendors would look at their own business case without taking into consideration the needs of the City, whereas the City was looking at the use of technology to serve the interests of the larger community.

In addition to the delivery of enhanced services, the use of wireless broadband was seen as an economic development tool and a guiding principle for providing better services to the community. A good example of such guiding principles was the CyberCity initiative – a project undertaken in 1996 to provide fiber services to the community and businesses as part of the development of a Smart community. Other principles guiding the City in its wireless project included:
•    High aspirations: The City of Grande Prairie wanted to be a model in both Alberta and for many other municipalities in Canada. This meant adoption of new technologies and resulting improvements in a whole range of services and their levels of efficiency.
•    Realistic approach: The City wanted to focus on a practical and realistic business model that would be free of existing hype and exaggerated promises surrounding municipal networks. By relying on KAZAM’s expertise in wireless technologies, the City developed a clear and realistic understanding of its internal strengths and limits, and in the process, foresaw what type of challenges and opportunities lay ahead.
•    Readiness for change: The City wanted to think and act differently across multiple agencies and instill new energy and sense of motivation required for its desired transformations to come.

Vision and Goals

Faced with a rapidly growing economy in Alberta, and the resulting socio-economic transformations, the City’s management decided to develop a strategic vision with progress and economic prosperity as its main motivating themes. The elements of this vision can be described as follows:
•    Improve the delivery of municipal government services, such as emergency response, transit and automated vehicle monitoring systems, public safety, and wireless cameras;
•    Enhance public safety applications through increased access to data and video for public safety workers and support emergency preparedness and response services;
•    Stimulate economic development by attracting business leaders and entrepreneurs to locate or expand business operations in Grande Prairie without competing with telecom operators;
•    Increase options to its businesses, citizens, and visitors to access wireless internet.

Key Challenges and Risks

In the course of the feasibility study, a multitude of challenges emerged along organizational and technology lines. The first set of challenges involved aligning expectations of various stakeholders about the impact of a municipal wireless network on the City. The City, in conjunction with KAZAM’s senior management team, had to map out the challenges ahead and how they could be overcome. Stakeholders also needed to understand what the absence of a wireless network would entail for the City services and its economic plans.
Another set of challenges related to the deployment of the network, its operation and management, financial impact, regulatory issues such as acquisition of spectrum, as well as development of the right business model. For example, the costs associated with power consumption at light poles were so high that they could render the project unfeasible.

The Approach

A five-step approach was adopted to arrive at the best possible business model that not only would cater to the needs of various agencies in the City but also address stakeholders’ expectations. The first step involved understanding why the City considered having a municipal network and what socio-economic rationale existed for launching such a network.

During this step, management teams from the City and KAZAM spent considerable time reviewing requirements from a variety of agencies and stakeholders including municipal, public safety, health, education, businesses, and some citizen and visitors. The teams embarked on developing technical and financial projections and in the process evaluated relevant business models. Business models under study included building, owning, and managing the network right through to a complete hands-off model.

Due to Grande Prairie’s location and small population size, it was difficult to know the level of response that would be generated from a Request for Proposals (RFP). The City and consultants from KAZAM decided to issue a Request for Interest (RFI) to gauge the level of interest by wireless technology providers. The RFI outlined the City’s goals and objectives along with desired service characteristics. The RFI was designed as a precursor to the RFP.

The next step involved understanding required applications that would operate on the network. Knowing what applications are needed by what type of end users is important since they heavily influence the network design. Applications were grouped based on the platform they were going to be used from. Grouping of applications helps identify short, medium, and long-term goals of the City. The grouping was as follows:

•    Text based
•    Browser based
•    Buffered video
•    Multimedia

The third step entailed the development of network characteristics based on required applications. They included coverage, spectrum, backhaul, services, and design of downlink and uplink speeds. With a future-proof network in mind that would protect the City’s long-term investment, the KAZAM team looked at and analyzed all the critical factors in the network and matched them against the City’s objectives and decision criteria. These critical factors included:

•    Matching of network with required applications
•    Analyzing coverage requirements
•    Analyzing regulatory requirements for spectrum acquisition and applying for it through provincial and federal regulatory agencies
•    Developing service level agreements
•    Conducting cost estimates

On the regulatory side, the City faced the challenge of spectrum availability. Spectrum is the chief enabler of any wireless network and the right approach to acquiring it poses one of the most complex issues in wireless communications. Moreover, once the network architecture is designed, municipal governments need to secure access to mounting locations, such as light poles. For these purposes, management teams from the City and KAZAM mandated themselves with a process driven task as shown below:

Acquisition of 4.9 GHz Spectrum

- Analyzing spectrum needs across regulated and unregulated frequencies;
- Auditing of existing spectrum in Grande Prairie and negotiating for partial use;
- Preparing a business case to apply for 4.9 GHz Public Safety spectrum with Industry Canada and local regulatory agencies.

The above efforts culminated in the approval by Industry Canada and the subsequent acquisition of 4.9 GHz band for the City. The acquisition of the standard license to establish and operate the 4.9GHz Public Safety band is first of its kind by a municipality in Canada. Public safety applications that can use this frequency include fire pre-plans, emergency response data, on-line access to various databases, geographic information Systems (GIS) mapping, routing, location and infrastructure data, enforcement services information and applications, email and remote office functions, real time video feeds, and emergency operations centre communications and systems.

Once the application and network requirements were in place, the next set of efforts involved making a decision on the right business model. There were many different and sometimes competing priorities to consider. Some of these competing priorities included:

•    Economic development
•    Government efficiency
•    Universal wireless access
•    Digital inclusion
•    Market and demand creation through development of new services

An important goal of the above efforts was to arrive at a desired model that matched the goals of stakeholders with those of economic development outlined by Grande Prairie. Data was also used from Wireless Task Force Assessment Questionnaires and interviews with representative agencies within the City. Some of the key strategic questions that were asked are as follows:

•    Does the network address the city’s needs & goals?
•    What are the usage criteria for services?
•    How is the financing structured?
•    What regulatory requirements must be met?
•    Who will manage the network?

One of the main benefits of defining the business model prior to issuing an RFP was clarification and removal of internal barriers and inconsistencies among several stakeholder needs and goals. This practice created a receptive ground for the adoption of wireless technology. The following business models were reviewed and analyzed during the exercise:

As discussed, the City decided to issue an RFI prior to RFP to gauge the level of interest and the quality of responses from different interested parties. The City received a significant level of interest in the RFI, which served as a harbinger of things to come for the preparation of RFP.

Conclusion

The City of Grande Prairie arrived at its decision based on findings from the feasibility study and insights from a variety of stakeholders, which proved to the City that a wireless network would benefit the City and act as a driving force to meet the City’s goals and objectives. The City’s preferred business model is an anchor-tenant model. The RFI has produced very positive response from vendors. With the above information in hand, the following next steps have been considered:

•    Investigate if infrastructure grants are available
•    Conduct technology pilot for safety applications
•    Conduct application porting audit
•    Conduct an RF survey for WiFi spectrum in the City for interference assessment
•    Conduct a technology pilot for access in high interference zones to assess network behaviour

Based on the positive findings to date, and subject to the mitigation of potential outstanding issues, the City anticipates beginning the first stages of implementation of a full broadband community wireless system by the fall of 2008.

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Brad Emond is the IT director of the City of Grande Prairie.

Public transport Wi-Fi is hot: SF BART to be unwired

Esme Vos — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:33:56 +0000

The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is negotiating with Sacramento-based Wi-Fi Rail for the installation of Wi-Fi access in BART trains that traverse the Bay Area. BART plans to offer free (with ads) and paid Wi-Fi service. BART will not be paying for the network; Wi-Fi Rail will bear all of the costs, approximately $20 million. Seen that model before?

For those who commute everyday from one end of the Bay Area to the other, which can often take more than 30 minutes, having access to Wi-Fi will help them get some work done. The service might provide additional incentive for people to get out of their cars, although to be honest, I think the price of benzine (over $4.00 per gallon) is probably the main reason people will be taking BART more often.

Public transport Wi-Fi is hot right now all over the world because more people are using public transport (traffic jams, high cost of benzine) and public transport operators are trying to get passengers onto their buses and trains by offering more amenities.

Recently, the French TGV announced the launch of Wi-Fi service on the high-speed trains between Paris and Amsterdam, as well as Paris and Frankfurt. In the UK, bus and railway operators have been rolling out Wi-Fi service to attract more passengers. For certain railway and bus companies, the ability to install cameras and transmit video live (for security reasons) provides an added incentive to install Wi-Fi.

What kind of backhaul do they use? Mostly 3G, but in areas without 3G, they use satellite and occasionally, WiMAX. Dramatic declines in the cost of 3G backhaul have made it much more economical to offer Wi-Fi to bus and train passengers.

In the case of BART, Macworld reports that “[r]iders will connect directly to a standard Cisco Systems access point on each car, which in turn will link up to the trackside network. Underground, that system will use deliberately unshielded coaxial cable, called “leaky coax,” and outdoor sections of the track will be served using solar-powered parabolic antennas.”

Not too long ago, Caltrain issued public tenders for the deployment of Wi-Fi on the trains between SF and Silicon Valley. Unfortunately they rejected both bids and the project is on hold. Read more about it here.