Albany (pop: 95,658), the state capital of New York, will begin deployment of Cisco’s ServiceMesh solution to provide free Internet access to residents and visitors, as well as public safety services.

Local service provider Tech Valley Communications will manage the deployment throughout the capital, initiating Wi-Fi services at key strategic points of commerce and industry.

As Tech Valley expands the network and public service bands become readied on the 4.9 GHz channel, the city also plans to expand public safety, emergency response and other city services.

“This is a perfect holiday present to the people of Albany,” said Mayor, Jerry Jennings. We’re making Albany a Smart City by cutting the wires and thereby the barriers to accessing the Internet, which will make New York’s Capital City a more desirable destination.”

Cisco ServiceMesh is an integrated, end-to-end system that provisions subscriber access and value-added services across wireless mesh networks. Cisco claims their ServiceMesh saves service providers the headache of testing the integration with back-end components to manage and optimize wireless services.

Cisco’s Aironet 1500 Series is the anchor to Albany’s mesh network. The 1500 Series contains additional built-in intelligence so it can automatically set-up and configure itself to operate within a mesh network and “self-heal” if it should lose power or incur some other interruption, thus reducing maintenance and management costs.

The wireless network will be partially financed through a $200,000 Empire State Development Grant and a $400,000 investment from TVC. The wireless Internet network will utilize the city’s Tech Valley’s fiber-optic network.

It is estimated that more than 1,000 businesses in the targeted areas may be able to benefit from the new wireless network. The wireless Internet network is expected to be available as early as this Spring. New York’s Tech Valley is a region that stretches from the Canadian border near Montreal to just north of New York City.

In other municipal wireless news, two front-runners are competing to build Houston’s huge WiFi network, reports the Houston Cronicle. San Francisco-based EarthLink is going head-to-head with Convergent Broadband, with ties to Houston-based Reliant Energy CEO Don Jordan.

At 600 square miles and at a cost expected to be in excess of $40 million, Houston’s project is likely to be the biggest in the United States once it’s completed in 2008.

Taxpayers won’t have to pick up the tab; the project will be funded by the company that creates the network and users who access it. The network will include an outreach program that offers low-income residents a discounted rate.

The Digital Houston Initiative includes the following objectives:

1. Reducing the City government cost for mobile computing, i.e. parking meters, traffic signals, maintenance crews, field inspections, video and photography in police cars, maps and building plans in fire and EMS vehicles;
2. Reducing the monthly cost of broadband for residential and small business users from $30-$50 to $10-$20; and
3. Bridging the digital divide for disadvantaged communities/ individuals and promoting economic development and conventions/tourism.

Houston received 5 Proposals earlier this year. The chosen vendor may also lease the city’s downtown Wi-Fi network, built to serve the city’s new wireless parking meters.

Even Leicester Square (above) in Brighton Beach in the UK is getting free Wifi (map). Four Communications, a marketing and PR company, is supplying the service.

Meanwhile, New South Wales, Australia, will get free Wi-Fi broadband within the next three years, under a plan announced today by the state’s premier Morris Iemma. It will establish “universal coverage” of free Wi-Fi in Sydney’s central business district in addition to the suburbs of Parramatta, Penrith and Liverpool and outlying cities Newcastle, Wollongong and Gosford.In early 2007, the state government will open bids to find commercial parties interested in providing the free broadband.

Telecom companies in Australia are skeptical. “The advertising model doesn’t work” said David Spence, CEO of Unwired, Sydney’s Navini-based broadband wireless system. “None of this is cheap and you have to recover it somewhere.”

A Telstra spokesman, Warwick Ponder, said: “We need to see the details of the proposal. Nothing comes for free in this world and we’d need to see how the network would be paid for.”

Posted by Sam Churchill on Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 at 12:30 pm.