Some Wichita City Council members are right to be raising questions about plans for a citywide wireless Internet system in Wichita.
It sounds like a cutting-edge idea, and proponents, including Mayor Carl Brewer, point to efficiencies gained by giving city workers and police access to computer databases in the field.
But the spotty experience of other cities is reason to move cautiously. In some communities, the city wireless hasn’t attracted as many low-income subscribers as planned, and costs to taxpayers have been higher than expected.
“I’ve learned enough that I’m skeptical,” council member Paul Gray said this week.
The council was wise Tuesday to move to get more input from a wireless expert before acting on any proposals.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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39 Comments
There is no need to provide wireless internet access to the public. If they do this it should be based on the needs of the city to operate.
Let individuals buy it if they want the service.
I agree, what’s the purpose? So poor people can sit on their buitts all day blogging like the rest of us?I need to clean up my house, pay my bills, and get to work instead of wasting time like this.
Oh well, it’s fun!
I have a totally different view of this whole situation.
I see how a WiFi system will benefit the city, county, school district and Westar. It would save tax payers money in the long run by eliminating things like cellular cards for laptops and hard-line internet connections to each of the hundred different locations that have broadband access throughout the city. It would also provide mobile access to every branch of the city and county governments to perform their work more efficiently. It would allow access for emergency situations, say a tornado, any government agency could “login” to have immediate access. It would allow for video monitoring of major intersections or highways to watch for potential hazards or monitor traffic accidents. It would allow for wirelessly monitoring electric, water, possibly even gas meters throughout the city, potentially staging off future price increases or lowering rates (it costs an average of $3 to read your meter).
There is so much it can be used for. The problem with this whole situation, the plan put forth by Azulstar doesn’t cover any of those scenarios even though they were requested by the city’s RFP. The RFP that the group put out stated there were two ways of bidding the project, 1) as a system that the public would use as well as the group and 2) as a private network for the group. The problem with the network if the public used it was that than homeland security money couldn’t be used to fund the project.
I do not think the WiFi project should be scrapped, I think it needs to be looked at closely by TECHS, not politicians. The best hardware/software should be selected and not by cost or by politics. There are too many factors to compare company x vs company y’s bottom dollar, the whole plan needs to be looked at.
“PS: If it passes, I get paid.
Sincerely,
Tech”
Not if Azulstar gets it.
The point is not who gets it, the point is that it is done right.
I dont want to see this wifi network FUBARD up more than the Arena.
I think it is a great idea! It would actually move Wichita into the 21st century!That said, however, the city needs to move cautiously and make sure the cost is balanced by the advantages. It is about time Wichita was at the forefront of a technological movement that would improve the quality of life for it’s citizens.
I wonder … Joe’s tower … could it be a platform?
One thing about going with a local company is that their heads will be on the line.
Joes tower would make a great distribution center. The optimal design would be a “hub and spoke” type design, where a majority of the traffic would come back to the center of the city wirelessly. That center tower, has to be tall enough to see every point in the county.
tony,repeater towers.
If Martinez is such a technology whiz why doesn’t his profile link work on the Knight Foundation’s home page?
SolDev,
Repeater towers will work in some areas but for the needed bandwidth between sites, there will need to be major “sub towers” in a ring around the edge of town. The max you can get reliably between towers is approx 40 Megabits. If you duplex them, you can get around 75, but than again, you run into some other overhead issues that has to do with routing, etc… The optimal plan would be for one or two primary “hub towers” in downtown. There would be approx 6 “sub towers” that would be redundant with at least 2 WiFi links and one hard-line backup link that would than connect the “feeder (or repeater) towers” that would be what the mobile units connect to. Point to point connections (i.e. city offices, parks, county facilities, etc…) would be connected to either the feeder towers or the sub towers, depending on bandwidth requirements.
Tony – “That center tower, has to be tall enough to see every point in the county.”
Does it? Or does it just have to be tall enough to see all the desired coverage area? Might it be that we should really target only a core area?
“close to 500 feet”
http://www.peerlesstower.com/
Ben,
500′ is tall enough to see every point in the county.
500′ is tall enough to see every point in the county.Posted by: Tech | June 13, 2007 at 10:08 AM
Having moved here from Oregon many years ago, you don’t know how sad that fact makes me.
Tech – even past Mount Trashmore? (Brooks Landfill)
How about a tower on top of that?
Looking at the idea of Peerless as hub: would you then put smaller feeder towers places like City Halls, schools, etc?
Ben, I can see the water tower in Goddard, the Grain Elevator in Garden Plaine, Vulcan Chemicals, Boeing, Augusta, Hawker Beechcraft, the water tower in Towanda and the Water tower at the Dog Track, all from the 19th floor of the Epic Center. The point on the epic center is still less than 500′.
I would co-locate on 6 other towers out in the community, the ones I have picked out, three are schools, one is the county tower at Sedgwick county park, and the other two are water towers.
I would than feed smaller towers or even light poles around town that will “fill in the gaps” from those 6 sub towers. The thing is, I would say 90% of the city could be covered utilizing existing infrastructure, i.e. no need to build new towers.
Also, as a side note, I could do all of this still without the peerless tower, utilizing City Hall or the Sedgwick county Court House and the SCTelcom building.
Have y’all looked at WiMAX?
Sol,
Yes and some of the equipment I would use is Pre-WiMax. The problem with WiMax is the standard still has yet to be nailed down and certified. So, it is hard to plan around WiMax right now. Traditional equipment in some instances works better than WiMax. This is a case that newer isn’t always better.
You have to remember that wifi signal processing can only transmit a certain distance. You can’t just have one transmitter emitting 2.4ghz with enough boost to cover the entire county. It would be so evasive to other radio transmitters and aircraft avionics.
I believe the FAA will only grant a distance for Wifi of around 40 feet. So you’re going to have to set up multiple units everywhere. What other cities have done is attached them to street light poles.
Joe,
Whoha… I am currently broadcasting 25 Miles on 2.4ghz. I read all of the time where people broadcast in distances upwards of 50 miles. FAA has nothing to do with spectrum, you are thinking of the FCC. FCC does not set down any rules as to distance, just power.
What you are talking about by attaching them to light poles is true, but that’s more for a mesh infrastructure, and still those AP’s can broadcast in excess of 300′. Mesh is feasible, but primarily in downtown and other heavily populated places. Its not as feasible for the entire city. To cover the entire city would be in excess of 30 AP’s per sq mile and the city of Wichita is roughly 150 to 200 sq miles at an approximant cost of 5k installed per AP and plus the 10k worth of backhaul equipment, the costs would prohibit that type of infrastructure for a significant amount of time. Plus places like downtown require more AP’s because of the denseness of the buildings.
FYI, your home wireless access point on average broadcasts 200′.
It is WELL past time for internet access to be free to EVERYONE. NOT doing so diminshes our society. Speaking as one who does not currently have access but used to, it should be considered public access.
I think it is a dumb ideal, anytime you have TAXATION used for one class of people’s TOYS causing a hardship on other classes of people is inconsiderate of a community as a whole.It takes the concept of FREE CHOICE and throws it out the window.
I am NOT buying you KIDS anything until you do your HOMEWORK!
Tech,I don’t live in Kansas, so this issue has neither bearing nor impact on me. If I did live in Kansas, I’d be damn glad to have you posting here. You’ve been exceedingly informative. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and time.
Wiseman,
It all depends on how the network is built. IF its built as a system that will benefit the government as a whole, thus saving money and increasing capabilities, than I see no problem. If it is built as a system that will “only benefit” a few peoples toys, which would be people like me, I agree. It shouldn’t be paid for by tax dollars. It’s the system that I propose is the system that I do think should be builtby these organizations and funded by tax money.
Sol,
Thanks for the compliment. Do they have anything like this type of system where ever you are from?
Some people think that government shouldn’t provide WiFi services. But, then consider the Internet. Who created it, that is paid for its development? DARPA.
Or the PC. Who created the integrated circuit? Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments, working on a DOD contract. Robert Noyce, at Intel, doing same. The first microprocessors were developed for defense avionics and NASA’s space program. Apple’s co-founders Steve Jobs and Wozniak’s dads worked for Lockheed’s Sunnyvale federal-government missile program.
The Web was created by two government-funded researchers at CERN in Europe.
I kindof think that it might be worth trying to give every 4th-grade-and-above student a laptop which can connect to the Internet with public-access WiFi.
Tech –
How about presenting a line-by-line itemization statement on that saving money that you are talking about?Show some real accountability of cost savings and system security as oppose to past, present and future systems.
The problem is, I am not the government, I am a citizen and I am not their equal.It does not benefit me.
Not being tech-savvy I can only speculate on this. It seems that there is a use for cops, fire-fighters, EMS, etc to have wireless. We have seen comments by others on this blog that they easily ’steal’ wireless from neighbors, etc, so the technology seems to be open. So, making a broad ‘open’ wi-fi for cops etc could then be easily piggy-backed for public use.
Is that a reasonable ‘ignorant’ description Tech?
FCC! My bad! That is what I meant.
If you can make it happen, that’s cool. You’re right about that the FCC only regulates power. But I was under the impression that WiFi didn’t have much of a distance.
Tech? Are you the one that is making a proposal to the city?
Dont most police cars have computers now? and how are they connected? It would seem that the police already have some sort of wireless service
Joe! I know that I am sitting a lot more than 40 feet from my access point to my network. I also know about people being able to sit in a parking lot and tie in so that is a lot more than 40 feet.
I still like the idea of housing it on your tower. It would definitely be high and central.
“Dont most police cars have computers now? and how are they connected? It would seem that the police already have some sort of wireless service”
They do and many other companies have the same thing through the cellular system which I work on. The problem is that it ain’t as cheap or fast as wi-fi would be but is more dependable.
You know the private sector can probably take better care of this. And it can be done for cheap or maybe even a free ad supported system where you see ads on part of your browser while using it.
The technology is there is build a completely free system supported by ad revenue. Businesses would love it if they could buy ad time and reach consumers in a targeted area. Let’s say you own “Joe’s Dry Cleaners” on East Central. You cannot afford to buy time on KAKE channel 10 because it cost too much and you don’t want to reach people all over central Kansas- just the ones near your store that are likely to patronize you. So if I could come to you and say I have a free wi fi service that has 12,000 subscribers within 5 miles of your business that you can advertise to at a much lower cost, you might be inclined to buy ad time from me. Then everytime a used hits one of my hubs in that neighbourhood and types in “dry cleaners” or “cleaners”, your ad runs before they get the search results. The I sell the same thing to cleaners in other parts of town. The city grants me free right of way in return for me giving them a free VPN for city business. The elctric company allows me free use of the poles I need and they get a network that they can use for free to do remote load control and meter reading. You win because you get free internet, I win because I can sell lots of ad time and the businesses that buy ads win more business. So it is win-win-win. I am actually surprised somebody hasn’t done it yet.
“Dont most police cars have computers now? and how are they connected? “
Yes, they are connected via 800 MHz which is very slow. The proposal is to add a 2.4 or 4.9 GHz radio to the police cars so they could be connected to the WiFi network where they can be and the older 800 system when they are out of range.
Kev, I’d argue with you on the “More Dependable” statement. With a properly designed and built (Key Word: Properly) I would say WiFi could be as or more dependable than Cell.
Kev, You make a point that some have argued, about each company getting “free services” for providing stuff. This is somewhat what the RFP was designed upon, except the shear number of devices just from the city, county, 259 and westar connected to the network would come really close to maxing out any WiFi based network.
The reason why the Cellular companies are not as favored is because cell cant get the speeds and/or cant service stationary targets, i.e. video cameras, remote offices, etc…
Tech – just what did the RFP really ask for? How much that would be cops etc and how much for citizens?
Ben,
Without giving out too much, the RFP asked for one of two options. Option 1 (the preferred option) asked for a closed network that would only be available to the 4 organizations involved but owned and operated by the vendor. Option 2 was an open network that the 4 orgs would be the primary tenants but still allowing access to the public only if it didn’t degrade their service.
You could always setup the wireless network like a home network… let people subscribe to the city and provide their MAC adresses for access. They don’t pay their bill and the MAC address gets marked “no access”