MuniWireless

Thomasville, Georgia is launching its municipal Wi-Fi service, thanks to a $500,000 grant provided by the state two years ago to Thomasville Utilities. The utility company owns an ISP called Rose.Net, which already provides Internet access to the community. Existing customers can buy access to the wireless network for $4.95 per month. There will be daily and monthly plans for people who are not customers of Rose.Net. The city plans to use the network for municipal use, especially public safety,…

Temple and Washington, two municipalities in Georgia, are deploying muni wireless networks for their police departments. Temple, which is on the border of Georgia and Alabama, is using their wireless network to deal with interstate crime and vehicle accidents. In addition to installing CCTV cameras in high-crime areas, they also installed cameras in police vehicles, which can store content for future reference. Police officers can access the network even when the cars are in motion.

In Washington, Georgia, an historic city…

Milledgeville, Georgia is using the $862,000 grant from the Wireless Communikties Georgia program (of the Georgia Technology Authority) for a WiMAX network. The city had been making plans for a citywide Wi-Fi network but decided to partner instead with Clearwire. Milledgeville believes that WiMAX will be a better technology that Wi-Fi for covering large areas of the community. Indeed, because Clearwire is already deploying WiMAX in Atlanta, extending the service to Milledgeville won’t be too difficult. The city wants to…

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…

The city of Augusta, Georgia is going ahead with its plan to deploy a large wireless network (4 square miles) in partnership with a local ISP. According to Informationweek, the city will cover most of the capital cost of the network but will hire an ISP to operate the network and share revenues with the city. An RFP is expected in 2 weeks and if all goes according to plan, the city will have the network up and running by…

Even though most of the mainstream media continue to focus on big cities and EarthLink’s problems, there’s a much more important story about this market that has gone largely ignored by most media outlets — the growing number of smaller cities where municipal wireless is taking hold.

The latest is Brunswick, Georgia, a 17,000-population community located south of Savannah. Brunswick has partnered with Atlanta-based WindChannel Communications to begin pilot deployment of a 4.9-GHz public safety network for video surveillance and police/fire…