Nine counties in North Central California may be following the same path as Wireless Silicon Valley which developed a region-wide wireless network.
The Wireless Sacramento Regional Coalition (WiSac) project (pdf Fact Sheet), plans to develop and deploy a wireless network that will cover nine counties over a 12,000-square-mile area, including Sacramento County, and over 30 municipalities with a combined population of about 3 million, including the city of Sacramento (pop: 450,000).
According to Wireless Sacramento, the regional network will provide VoIP, data, video streaming applications as well as a communications platform for local and county government and services. As of now, the plan calls for access to be either free or at a minimal cost.
“The SCV Network, a non-profit science and technology association, will be responsible for the overall management of the project with support from the Wireless Sacramento Regional Project Coalition, a forum of representatives from Sacramento regional city and county governments, education, transportation and non-profits” stated John Ramos, President of the SCV Network.
“Our vision is to deploy a California intra-state municipal wireless broadband network between Sacramento, Silicon and Central Valleys. This network would provide a municipal wireless bridge between the regions and potentially other parts of California as well.”
The WiSac project is an IT and telecommunication solution for the Sacramento region. It will also assist organizations called upon for emergency relief, public safety and national security during natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes and enemy attacks. Organizations who provide emergency services include law enforcement, fire departments, ambulance companies, the American Red Cross, FEMA and The National Guard.
The WiSac Coalition and the Smart Capitol Venture Network, the managing non-profit organization for WiSac, will be available to answer questions regarding the WiSac project at the next Sacramento Executive networking event on September 20, 2006, 5:30PM to 9:00PM at Lomo Argentine Grill in Old Town Sacramento.
Unstrung points out that MobilePro — which builds municipal networks using gear from Strix Systems pulled out of Sacramento altogether after a disagreement with the city.
The two sides gave conflicting versions of the dispute. Sacramento, according to CIO Steve Ferguson, was simply requesting a contract similar to ones in place in other large cities.
“At the time we issued the bid, we thought we had a very good proposal,” Ferguson says. “But the world kept changing, and we kept going back to MobilePro and saying, ‘Here’s what they did in Philadelphia, in Portland, in San Francisco, we’d like to continue to work with you but we need you to give us the same deal as other cities are getting.’ ”
MobilePro, counters company Jerry Sullivan, had offered an alternative proposal that was very similar to the city of Portland’s agreement with MetroFi.
At the root of the conflict were two issues: connection speeds and revenues. MobilePro, which had projected an $8 million investment to establish the network planned to offer a free service to low-income residents at 56 Kbit/s, while the city wanted speeds closer to broadband level, of 300 Kbit/s.
The Wireless Sacramento Regional Coalition, which covers nine counties over a 12,000-square-mile area, including Sacramento County, and over 30 municipalities with a combined population of about 3 million is even larger than Wireless Silicon Valley which plans to serve some 2.4 million people.
[...] Wireless Silicon Valley in California, gathers 41 cities together to deploy a wireless network that will cover nine counties over a 12,000-square-mile area, including Sacramento County, and over 30 municipalities with a combined population of about 3 million, including the city of Sacramento (pop: 450,000). [...]
Left by dailywireless.org » State-wide Wireless Broadband Access on January 5th, 2007