Ten Colorado cities say they’re ready to create a vast wireless broadband network (pdf) for residents, businesses and visitors and will start taking bids early next year, reports the Rocky Mountain News.
The Thursday announcement by Colorado Wireless Communities comes seven months after the group began studying the project’s feasibility. The wireless network would cover Arvada, Boulder, Broomfield, Golden, Lakewood, Louisville, Northglenn, Superior, Thornton and Wheat Ridge.
CWC began looking in April at the economics of the project that could potentially serve more than 620,000 residents. The group hopes to have a vendor in place by spring 2007. There’s no timetable for when the network might be up.
The city of Denver also has been studying such a network. CenturyTel is building a wireless network in Vail, and MobilePro is building a network in Longmont.
Colorado lawmakers passed a bill in 2005 – after lobbying from Comcast and Qwest – intended to keep municipalities from building their own wireless broadband networks. But the law simply prevents cities from spending tax dollars to build telecommunications networks without voter approval. The CWC plan is designed as a public-private partnership.
It will provide access points across some 200 square miles. CWC hired Civitium, an Alpharetta, Ga.-based consulting firm for community broadband initiatives, to help with the economic assessment.
Other large-area Wi-Fi clouds include Wireless Silicon Valley in California, where 41 cities have banded together, the joint Wireless Suffolk County project on New York’s Long Island, Wireless Washtenaw, a $26 million Michigan network for county residents and a Statewide WiMAX network in Rhode Island, a $14 million project covering some 1,000 square miles (right).
JupiterResearch last year said the average cost of maintaining a municipal wireless network is $150,000 per square mile over five years.
Bert Williams, vice president of marketing for Tropos Networks, says their cost is around $75,000 per square mile. Tropos hardware accounts for about 60 to 70 percent of the total cost of installation. Adding the ongoing costs for backhaul and system management, he believes the number to be closer to $100,000 per square mile.
The inconvenient truth about Wi-Fi is that the maximum range is about 1,000 feet.
If you want to use metropolitan Wi-Fi inside your home, you’ll likely need to buy an external client with an external antenna (between $50 and $150). The Wi-Fi infrastructure requires access points costing $3K-$5K (each) every few blocks (along with internet backhaul).
Cities would like to put up Mobile WiMAX networks but they can’t – you’d need a license for that.
WiMAX is one-tenth the cost of 3G, says Sprint. Figure $15K/mile (like Rhode Island). The FCC and the NTIA have not provided effective leadership. So here’s a suggestion from the grassroots:
Consider the Aeronautical Telemetry Service Band (2360-2395 MHz), just below the unlicensed WiFi band (2400-2485) and above AT&T/BellSouth’s WCS band (for Mobile WiMAX). If that upper band (7th Report & Order) were dedicated exclusively for shared municipal wireless services, an interference-free last-mile connection might be possible.
If the 2.3 GHz band were extended from 2.345 to 2.395 (50 Mhz), then Municipalites might get half (25 MHz) and commercial providers might get half. AT&T/BellSouth could keep their frequencies in the WCS band. Everyone’s happy!
Other DailyWireless Municipal Wireless articles include; Bellevue: Do It Yourself and Lease Back, MuniFi Spending Up, Municipal Wireless Flash Applications, Park City: Solar WiFi, New Orleans Haults Cloud, AT&T Gets Riverside, Boston Turns On, Portland MetroFi Antennas, BellSouth Pushing 2.3 GHz, Michigan Cloud Late, Rural Broadband Dying, Washington State’s 1500mi Cloud, Rain on SF Cloud, Chicago: WiFi City, Belair For Minneapolis, Houston’s WiFi Parking, Sacramento’s 12,000 mile Regional Cloud, Pittsburgh’s WiFi Cloud Live, City Cloud Surveys, Toronto Unwired, Cloud for Silicon Valley, Oregon Unwired, AT&T’s Springfield Illinois Cloud, Minneapolis Goes Local, WiFi City Applications, Tropos: Two Mesh in One, Meshing Tibet, Public Safety Mesh, Wavion Beams CityFi, Navini in Mexico, Pasadena Goes Earthlink, AirBand Unwires Texas, BellSouth Expands WiMAX, Clearwire’s $900M Payday, and Mobile WiMAX: It Begins.
[...] Ten Colorado cities are creating a vast wireless broadband network for residents, businesses and visitors. The anticipated release for the Colorado Wireless Communities RFP is January 2007 with vendor selection immediately following and project deployment by Fall of 2007. [...]
Left by dailywireless.org » State-wide Wireless Broadband Access on January 5th, 2007