Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer’s plan for citywide wireless access is an exciting idea with practical applications for a host of city services, such as giving housing inspectors on-site access to records and letting police and emergency rescue personnel search building diagrams in the field. The service, which might include limited free access to citizens, could give more Wichitans high-speed access to the Internet.
Questions remain about the costs of setting up the system, the charge for using it, whether this is the government’s role, and how the citywide system would affect other Internet providers. There also are information security concerns with wireless access.
Wichita City Council members, who will consider the wireless plan at today’s meeting, need to ask lots of questions. But it’s good to see Wichita leaders being progressive and positioning our city for the 21st century.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- Jed on Let immigrants run
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- Regular on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/23
- Freebird1971 on Open thread 11/23
32 Comments
The following article seems a good summary of problems associated with city wide wi-fi —
The Problems with Citywide WirelessBy Eric Griffith
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/3599176
I’m not techno savy — but it seems the best service to the city is provided for free to the city in exchange for use of light poles etc ….. and very little city money is used to fund / operate the system ….. I’m all for a system that costs taxpayers nothing, but cameras for police cars, traffic control, high crime areas etc …. have got to be a higher priority.
“…..it’s good to see Wichita leaders being progressive and positioning our city for the 21st century…”
Randy it already is the 21st Century —- Wichita is just playing catch up again, city wide wi-fi has been around for almost a decade ….. same thing with condos downtown, riverfront development, not surprisingly the area is lagging behind it seems in gated communities —– but I’m sure they’ll come around some time soon …..
Better late than never
Question: will the City do business with local entrepeneuers of will it go out of state?
First of all, I am a locally owned company who sent in a proposal and Inever got one single response from the city regarding my proposal. Ipartnered with a Major wireless manufacture (Hint: the ones who developed Verizons and Alltel’s networks) to put the proposal together.We answered every single requirement of the RFP including Stop light monitoring, video surveillance, water meter reading, parking meter reading, electric meter reading, various types of sensor reading, mobile wireless to vehicles, fixed milti-meg wireless (up to 45 meg) to all city, county, school & Westar facilities and the possibility of providing internet services to low income/HUD type situations.
What this company is proposing is mostly hype and not feasible for the stated costs. The RFP stated that the City and County wanted to replace their internet access at every location (except for some critical locations where they would have redundant wireless/wireline connections) which alone would bring any network to 60% capacity. Once adding the cities 500, the school districts 500 mobile units, the counties 200 some mobile units and Westar adds on their mobile units, that than basically maxes out the network.
My opinion is that the WWNC (Wichita Wireless Network Consortium) will not get their monies worth, they will not get the functionality that they asked for in the RFP and it will cost 10 times what they are saying today. Also, they are not using any “name brand” equipment, they will depend on their in-house staff to trouble shoot any hardware/software “issues” that come up frequently with “build it yourself” WiFi equipment.
Oh, ALSO, they don’t have a local office and don’t have any type of local service guys. Do I need to say more?
It should be interesting, maybe I should have mailed the RFP from California, maybe than I would have had a shot at the project.
Wichita WiFi: Did you make the necessary campaign contributions?
Interesting question anon …
On a thread a couple of days ago Joe and I were discussing the need to keep the ‘best and brightest’ in Wichita (the KU Med Center issue). His approach was to keep them at WSU etc because once they see the outside world they never come back.
I took the opposite approach – encourage young people to get the best education available anywhere – KU, MIT, etc. Then encourage them to return to Wichita to pursue their careeres. In fact, I advocate recruiting people from all over the place to come and call Wichita home.
I submit, however, that rewarding Wichita contracts to out-of-state companies works against that effort. Why locate in Wichita if you must work out-of-state and out-of-state companies get the local work?
You should not be surprised that you got no response on your reply to the RFP. Carl Brewer along with the council decided prior to the RFP being issued who would get the deal.
They are not concerned with the cost to the taxpayers and they are not going to take the time investigate it and ask the tough questions. They are not even willing to ask themselves if it is truly the role of government to provide such a service to the public.
They would have to work a little harder to investigate the issue thoroughly. Look at the expensive mess we have with the air bubble over the tennis courts. This is the same council that said they were going to lose so much money when the state reduced the tax on machinery and equipment and they may have to raise taxes. Now they are issuing more IRB’s (tax credits) to businesses. They are cramming a new apartment complex with these IRB’S down the throats of the neighborhood that is opposing it. At their meeting this morning they said more information was coming in about the project but there would not be another public hearing on it before they make their decision.
Carl Brewer said that is just the way it is. It is not unusual for more information to be presented after the public hearings and if you want it you should come to the city council meetings. What kind of BS is that? How hard is it to hold a public meeting? This sounds just like the Bob Knight lackey Carl Brewer is. Ignore the people and cram whatever down the throat of the people.
My predictions:
This will end up like most other government things…
1. Slow
2. Unresponsive
3. No support
4. Constantly unreliable
I mean, calling technical support at most other things is pretty tedious.
Could you imagine having to talk to a government empoyed tech support line?
Nathan–
According to you,
1. Government is slow, unresponsive, unsupportive, and constantly unreliable.
2. The U S Marines are part of government.
Therefore, the U S Marines are slow, unresponsive, unsupportive, and constantly unreliable.
Hmmm . . . did you tell your drill instructor? What would he say?
Actually,
I never said ALL government.
I said MOST other government.
You are trying to draw a logical conclusion based on a faulty assumption that my statement was all encompasing.
Nice try though.
Who is more likely to be concerned with the impact of this project upon Wichita – a local company whose people live here or an out-of-state company with no real investment in the community?
Those stupid billboards on the Turnpike should change from “Wichita’s Got the Goods” to “Wichita: For Sale to Lowest Bidder.” They wouldn’t even have to get rid of the people wearing the ridiculous hats.
Of course Nathan as a government employee cant criticize the entity he belongs too. But he is right the government has a reverse Midas touch. whether its this or fema on its way to greensburg. Free internet for citizens sounds good on paper but socialism is bad practice. It sounds expensive, requiring large amounts of tax dollars, I doubt the city will put up the capital to keep it maintained, and up to date. Which means in six months it will be out of date. And what about security?
So, according to many posters here, the city should never do anything, or should pay more for it, or should not try to do something positive?
The above complaints about lowest cost bidder (imagine the howls if a non-lowest cost bidder were selected); the perceived lack of maintenance (anyone see the proposal or commitments for service and maintenance?); the griping about tech support (anyone bother checking credentials?” etc, absolutely prove that there are people that are going to complain just for the sake of complaining.
I cannot believe that people who absolutely hate this town and everthing that happens here so much still live here.
Raptor,
Lowest cost doesn’t always mean best deal, as I’m certain you know.
Here’s an interesting bit of trivia: Coleman, when they make coolers for Walmart, makes them with less insulation than what they use in identical coolers shipped to other retailers. Why? To hit Walmart’s price-point.
Sometimes, you get what you pay for.
So lets double property taxes and sales taxes to make fund all of raptors projects
Wow, sounds high tech, good and up-to-date but I am somewhat against it.To hell with those that say we are behind the times, I would rather think of it as being smarter seeing others make the mistake first.Do not get me wrong about it but I am not in favor of sweeping a problematic system under the rug as a solution.In other words, you cannot mask over a problem with something different, the problem will still be there.If the system becomes too dependent on a technology and failure happens then we have idiots that know nothing about doing things the old way, wait and see what happens during the 11 year solar flare cycles.I would also be leery about costly contractual agreements which this is leading to it; already in the proposal is a 40% increase to the city internet service which does not mean improvement.Yes, it is time to contact my city council representative to let them know how I feel about it.
I proposed muncipal Wi-Fi right on WEBlog several months ago. But my thinking has changed. I now think that cell modems are preferable to Wi-Fi, because they offer greater security and work in the countryside as well as the city. Wi-Fi was a good idea for its time, but cell wireless is much better. With multiple cell-service providers, the providers must compete on subscription costs, driving costs to consumers down as the market grows.
The city government may be able to make the case for a wireless connection for it’s own purposes.One of the examples given is simply ludicrous. A building inspector needing instant access to building plans? I prefer people to be competent in their profession. Hence for a scheduled appointment you would access the materials you need before you leave.
Back to the point, government providing the so-called free access to citizens is improper. ‘Free’ access is already available at most libraries/schools or visit your local coffee shop.
This is a vote-buying scam by the city council. Next election it will be, ‘Vote for me! I gave you free Internet!’
Raptor,
Ok, lets look at this logically.
This company is out of Michigan. They have only 4 cities in Michigan (no where else) under their belt and by looking at their website, you can see that of those areas, not much is covered by true “mobile wireless”, the type that the WWNC group wants.
As best as I can tell, this company was the smallest company except for mine replying to the RFP.
To address tech support, unless they are local, they will have a hard time dealing with any outages, configurations, etc… Phone calls can be taken elsewhere but how effective is that if they can not see the conditions, talk to the techs, etc??? WiFi is a totally different arena than say DSL or Cable. There is a lot of guess work and experience that goes into dealing with these situations.
As for the “lowest bid” you must also look at what is included. We have a long history here of massive cost overruns.
Mark,
Cell works in many more places, but you are still limited in bandwidth and they are somewhat cost prohibitive currently. The idea behind a Muni-Wifi is to eliminate 3/4 of the “cell cards” because they stay in town and don’t roam. Also, WiFi offers a lot more bandwidth.Backhauls are now made that can deliver 100 Megabit, cell is limited to1 Megabit.
Is this Wi-Fi or Wi-Max? Y’all should look into the google phones with all the free hotspots that open up :->
“I cannot believe that people who absolutely hate this town and everthing that happens here so much still live here.”
Yea raptor, why ARE you still here?
You know that your comment was absolutely stupid. Did it ever occur to you that some of us love the city we have invested so heavily in and therefore are concerned when we see something done in a possibly wrong way?
But, I suppose it is easier to yell “Wichita-hater” than to actually address the issue.
I don’t really know a lot about internet, wifi, etc. However, it does seem to me that the City should be patronizing a local concern when possible. In this case it would seem that a local firm would have a lot more to lose if it doesn’t work out well. An outside company can just walk away.
The sames goes to outside consultants. When the city can just ask locals. There is plenty of brilliant, skilled, accomplished, experienced, innovative and entrepreneurial people in Wichita to come up with ideas and solutions to all the city ever needs.
More than likely the campaign manager for Carl Brewer will have the company she’s involved with get the bid.
Carl campaigned so big on this issue but when the discussion came up today he was kind of quite.
They have put it off for a month so they can comeback to the people and “look we studied it but we need to reopen the bids”. What they won’t tell you is the politcal payoff for Carl Brewers campaign manager
Government is only what people make it. If you elect dumb and stupid idiots like GW Bush, they tend to do dumb and stupid things (FEMA, Iraq ect). As for the city building the wifi network, they would probably do as most cities and univesity campuses do and contract out the building and maintainence to a private company or the local telco company that has the technicians and expertise to maintain the system
Kev – thing is, should they contract out to local taxpayers or send the money out-of-state.
Only a Lib can put something in a Wireless in Wichita Topic about Bush. Amazing…
The technology associated with wireless is amazing. Just in engineering standards, the City could save a bundle of tax dollars (monitor stations, etc.)
The ability to do field work is limitless and of course, one doesn’t have to pay for the infrastructure of mass cables and specialized computers to route messages.
Wireless cameras, video monitors, warning systems (backup or primary), transportation warnings and re-routings, trans communication to all essential departments…
It’s well worth the money imo.
Repub…
I do not disagree with you that the possibilities are limitless by having this network but I agree with Wichita Wifi up there. I dont think we will get what they say we will get. I am familure with the technology and the equipment and i dont think you can get what they plan on providing for the pricetag they are quoting.
A comment about a local provider vs an out-of-state provider. With the local guy I can go to his office and ‘beat him up’ if the system doesn’t work. I cannot do that with the out-of-state one. Also, the local guy might see this as his ’showcase’ to springboard his business. That will give him a real incentive to make sure it works.
What makes everyone think Azulstar was the low bid? I watched the meeting and unless my tv left something out, I never heard “low bid.” What was the bid by the way? a unique phrase was used in the power point: “guarenteed sliding cost model?” Is this about government efficiencies or about getting a cut of the action?
The City is currently using verizon wireless cards, the question should be, “what is the savings beyond the current practice?”
The Council agenda said staff thought it would cost $250K a year. Add in free public towers, and real savings will be hard to account for. How much connectivity would $250K buy from Verizon? A lot. Oh, yeah, and the technology works. What was the Verizon bid? They left that out didn’t they.
My guess is this project is not about the lowest bid. Knowing the city it’s about generating a new revenue stream.