Urban Development: Do You Wi-Fi?
Over the last few years more and more cities are being hounded by companies to implement long-range Wi-Fi systems. Their sales pitch is simple. Improve emergency services with up-to-date real-time information in the field. And boost the economy by drawing more technology based jobs and attract more residents to the area. This is hardly the case.
Emergency services, police departments, EMTs, fire departments are not seeing an increase in response time. The city simply replaced their laptop’s digital cell phone card with a Wi-Fi card. Although the Wi-Fi is faster than the cell card the amount of data sent and received is so insignificant because the systems they’re using were designed for low bandwidth service. So, what does this mean to emergency service? An officer can check the registration date of your car in two minutes rather than four. I’m not saying that having faster network service in a police car is bad thing. However, the cell phone modules that the police had were fast enough to stream videos from the internet. Now these emergency services have more bandwidth at their disposal but with out-dated database systems.
The argument of technology based jobs is a joke. What company is going to use a public wireless system with a speed limit for the same price as a DSL or cable install? If a large firm moves into town and they sell web based services they are going to install T1 lines or fiber optic. A public wireless service with an average cost of $40 per connection is far more expensive and restrictive than a T1 or fiber optic line.
The proposal that more people will be attracted to a city with city wide Wi-Fi is ridiculous. When was the last time you thought about moving to a new city or town because they offered wireless for a fee? This might be an attraction if you’re shopping for an apartment but a whole city? I suppose that this feature could attract people on low budgets if the service was free, like a coffee shop hot spot. But it’s not! The service cost on average the same as DSL or even a cell phone network card but slightly less than cable.
I think it’s safe to say that many city planners missed the ball on this one and we, the tax payers, footed the bill.
This is not the first time I have expressed my disappointment with city wide wireless programs. In early 2007 I reported to News 8 Austin my disgruntled view point of the City of San Marcos, Texas implementing their city wide Wi-Fi at tax payer expense.
Link to News 8 Austin article with video
Anthony,
You know what I found really interesting after reading this article? The City of San Marcos, Texas is missing out on an opportunity to capitalize some funds. They could conceivably run this project themselves out of their IT department.
The city paid MetroNetIQ of Austin around $180,000 to assist with this project. That’s $180,000 of tax payer dollars. I know that CenturyTel is charging around $40 a subscription to access San Marcos’ wireless internet, but is all that money going to CenturyTel’s pockets? How did this benefit the City of San Marcos? More importantly where are any realized benefits either tangible or intangible that the tax payers have realized?
Also I fail to see how a differential service is practical and fair? If someone lives outside of the the downtown area the wireless service will degrade, thus the argument that EMS and police will capitalize on this technology is limited. Unless of course by capitalizing we only look at the urban core and not the periphery. So effectively all citizens of the City of San Marcos, Texas paid for those downtown to potentially gain a benefit from EMS and police services and for some companies to make a profit.
Sam,
I applaud your research. You are correct about the limited range on the wireless transmitters. However, it does cover about 25 square miles. But if you’re outside the downtown area and located in a building or home you really need a special “bridge” to connect your computer to the network. The “bridge” simply helps amplify the signal through the walls.
The City of San Marcos is really using this Wi-Fi service to remotely monitor our new smart water and electric meters. Oddly enough we, the tax payers of San Marcos, paid for these new wireless utility meters so we can layoff the meter-readers and the guys that disconnect and reconnect service from both the electric and water departments. All together the City of San Marcos spent about half a million dollars to fire about 30 guys and upgrade their internet connection speed.
The really funny thing is that the city was originally proposing this as a potentially FREE service to all of San Marcos residents as a joint venture between them and Texas State University. But then they leased the rights to CenturyTel.
Sounds like the city pulled a bait and switch.
People need to band together and create there own wireless network.
Urban Wireless
This update was really interesting, how often do you update your blog? I’ve bookmarked this site and gave you guys a tweet, hope to read more soon!