Nearly a dozen communities in the foothills of northern Colorado will get WiFi thanks to wireless ISP Front Range Internet using Nortel mesh gear
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Front Range plans to bring municipal wireless services to Fort Collins, Windsor, Loveland and other cities along the I-25 corridor north of Denver. Their municipal wireless solution expects to integrate applications, services and technology under a two-year agreement announced today.
Colorado Wireless Communities, the organization formed to oversee the project, has a 2007 budget of $133,900 for consultants, legal fees and contract negotiations. Cost of the service ranges from an hourly visitor rate of $4.95 to $29.95 monthly for a high-speed consumer plan with five e-mail accounts.
A timeline for the project calls for a contract to be awarded by the end of this year and engineering and construction of the network to begin by early 2008. It will then take 12 to 18 months to be available in all 10 cities — a wi-fi corridor covering 137 square miles.
Nortel also announced that it has deployed a municipal wireless network in Greenville, N.C. with WindChannel Communications, a provider of wireless solutions for government and private enterprise.
This network is making free broadband wireless Internet access available to mobile professionals, residents and emergency first responders throughout downtown Greenville.
The announcements were made at MuniWireless07: New England, a regional industry conference where Nortel is demonstrating their municipal wireless solution.
“Combining infrastructure, services and applications into a single, integrated municipal wireless solution creates a compelling offer with high community and economic value,” said Charles Salameh, vice president, Network Business Solutions, Nortel. We have the technology, revenue-generating applications, relationships, services and global experience to deliver this integrated solution, and to get it in right the first time.”
Nortel’s municipal wireless network deployments include one of the world’s largest, serving more than 160,000 subscribers in Taipei City, and a wireless mesh network for Golden Telecom that is expected to eventually offer service to more than 3.9 million households in Moscow, Russia.
Nortel also recently announced an agreement with 4G Metro, a Granbury, Texas-based wireless ISP, to help provide high-speed wireless Internet access for more than 9,000 daily commuters on the Trinity Railway Express between Dallas, Fort Worth and the DFW International Airport.
On 1 June 2007, MuniWireless updated their municipal wireless list. They show some 385 cities and counties in the US planning or deploying municipal networks up. If you add the number of cities and counties that are seriously considering municipal Wi-Fi, the number rises to 424. Download the PDF here.
Related DailyWireless stories include; Ten Cities Under Colorado Cloud, Wireless Houston: Size Queen?, Statewide/Nationwide Wireless Broadband, Riyadh Goes Wireless, Taipei Undetered, To Serve Man, WiFi City Applications, Public Safety Mesh, Digital City Winners.
