MuniWireless

The Chaska Herald has a long article on what is happening with the Chaska muni Wi-Fi network, one of the first in the US. It also reports on the municipal wireless networks in three Minnesota communities: Buffalo, Moorhead, and St. Paul:

For the most part, there is a greater confidence in Chaska.net these days. Bandwidth has increased (119 percent in the last year), signals have strengthened (thanks to more router gateways) and those with expectations of a system to rival cable…

For 2010, Firetide forecasts 100 percent increase in demand for city-wide wireless infrastructure mesh networks but with a focus on municipal infrastructure rather than free public Wi-Fi applications. Eager for more and affordable capacity, municipalities will turn towards wireless infrastructure mesh vendors that can provide “fiber-like” performance at a fraction of fiber’s cost for a variety of voice, video and data applications – fixed and mobile – for city-wide municipal and transportation projects.

Read more here.

Yesterday, I posted a notice of public tender from Union City, New Jersey for their wireless camera project. The official bid document is on MuniWireless:

UnionCamera-Bid Doc-v10e-Public Release

If you are going to bid on this project, make sure that you contact the municipal clerk. The city may amend the bid at a later time so you don’t want to rely on this document alone.

NOTICE TO BIDDERS

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN, that sealed Bids will be received by the Board of Commissioners…

Union City, New Jersey, has issued a public tender seeking bidders to set up a wireless network with video cameras. Read the official bid notice below.

[I posted the document today on Scribd: http://www.scribd.com/doc/26051646/Union-City-NJ-wireless-camera-project-bid]

NOTICE TO BIDDERS

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN, that sealed Bids will be received by the Board of Commissioners of the City of Union City, County of Hudson, State of New Jersey on April 2, 2010 at 11:00 AM prevailing time in the City Clerk’s Office, second floor, 3715 Palisade…

I was interviewed a few weeks ago for this article about the troubles of Wireless Washtenaw, an ambitious plan launched in 2004 to bring wireless broadband (not just Wi-Fi) to the entire Washtenaw County in Michigan. The county is huge: it covers 720 square miles and has only 347,000 residents. Despite $2 million in private investment from a service provider called 20/20 Communications, the network has attracted only 550 users. By contrast, the article points out the success of a…

Novarum has just written an 8-page white paper titled “2010: Guidelines for Successful Large Scale Outdoor Wi-Fi Networks” which contains recommendations to service providers on what makes a successful large-scale outdoor Wi-Fi network today. These recommendations are based upon Novarum’s work between 2006 and 2009 testing over 175 wireless networks in 36 North American cities. Last April 2009, PC World published Novarum’s test results for 3G networks in the US. Earlier in February 2009, Ken Biba, one of Novarum’s founders,…