Oklahoma City is launching what it claims to be the world’s largest city-owned municipal Wi-Fi mesh network. The city-wide network will be used only for public safety and municipal applications. It is not open to the public.
According to Muniwireless, who talked to Mark Meier, IT director of Oklahoma City, the network covers 555 square miles with 95 percent coverage in urban areas and 95 percent coverage on main roads. The city paid $5 million for the network out of public safety capital sales tax and city capital improvement funds.
Here’s a coverage map. The area within the blue lines is the urban core, where there is 95 percent coverage. The red lines denote the main line roads.
ComputerWorld says the network consists of 1,200 fixed Wi-Fi nodes and 850 mobile Wi-Fi nodes (in police cars and fire trucks) provided by Tropos Networks.
In 2006, Oklahoma City issued an RFP for the public access portion, but no one responded. Here’s the Muniwireless post about that RFP.
Everyone likes to talk up their size, but EZ Wireless created the first truly large-scale municipal wireless network several years ago. Their 700 square mile public service WiFi “cloud” is still the largest.
Here’s a NY Times story on their network from August, 2005.
DailyWireless has more than 650 related Municipal Wireless stories including; A MuniFi Roundup, Muni-Fi’s Got Trouble, Who the MuniFi MAN?, Municipal WiFi: What Would You Do?, Wireless Silicon Valley: Would You Believe a Dozen Hotspots in San Carlos?, Free Grass Roots Wi-Fi: It Works in Portland, Starbucks Adds AT&T Wi-Fi, Dvorak: Muni WiFi Will Die, and Minneapolis Bridge Collapse & Emergency Communications.
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