MuniWireless

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…

Swebus, a long-distance bus operator in Sweden, is now offering Wi-Fi access to its passengers. Swebus has over 80 buses and transports two million passengers every year. According to the press release, this Wi-Fi deployment is the largest in Scandinavia since it will be available in buses that go to Norway and Denmark. Swebus is using wireless access points from Moovera; the backhaul is Hutchison 3’s (HSPA) cellular network. In addition to providing Wi-Fi access, the bus company will use…

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…

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…

Arriva, a train operator in Scandinavia, is offering free Wi-Fi service to passengers traveling across Denmark, starting with the trains that run between Aarhus, Thisted and Tønder in Jutland. Arriva carries more than 7 million passengers each year.

The backhaul for Arriva’s Wi-Fi service is 3G HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) from 3 (www.3.dk) (which is 60% owned by Hutchinson, a Hongkong based telecommunications company). Because almost all of Denmark has HSPA coverage, the Arriva trains will not use satellite as…