Municipal Wi-Fi: Alive and Well in Government Apps

Oklahoma City today went public with the details of what they say is the largest municipal Wi-Fi deployment ever - and they do mean municipal here, because public access ISP-class services are not part of the picture. This network is purely for government applications, like public safety, building inspection, and related functions. In a press release from their equipment supplier, long-time muni Wi-Fi vendor Tropos Networks, Tropos notes that the network covers 555 square miles with 95% coverage of the core of the city. Yes, there are holes in coverage, I learned from a conversation with Mark Meier, the city's IT Director. But the benefits over the previous solution, which ran at 4800 bps on Motorola RNC 6000 infrastructure, are obvious in terms of both throughput and especially cost, and Mr. Meier mentioned that essentially every city department has applications they'd like to get up and running on the new Wi-Fi network.

Interestingly, Oklahoma City is using only the 2.4 GHz. band, and not 4.9 GHz., which is available to local governments on a licensed basis. They could of course use this band in the future if desired, but the broad array of clients (primarily notebooks) already equipped with 2.4 GHz. radios was a key element in further reducing the cost of the project. I don't have a cost breakdown on exactly what they spent (although the total was about $5 million), or a comparison in terms of opportunity cost, but I do hope to do a study of this or another similar deployment at some point. Regardless, I think we'll find that municipal Wi-Fi is very, very cost-effective, and that there really is no better option for municipalities of almost any size - every very large cities, as is the case here.

So this kind of begs the question - will municipal-services deployments open a back door to the resurgence of public-access muni Wi-Fi? Mr. Meier mentioned that Oklahoma City is not prohibited from going that route if they so choose (and that such is regardless not required to ensure the financial success of the project), and we may find that these deployments have enough excess capacity, and enough control over traffic flow and prioritization, that such is offered at least on a limited basis in some locales. I want to mention, however, here and again, for the record, that I personally oppose municipalities serving as ISPs; such is the province of the private sector and municipalities are always better served by create a level regulatory playing field and letting the competitive (if not free) market get the job done. It's a fundamental conflict of interest for a regulator to be competing with those they regulate.

Regardless, the presence of so much infrastructure has got to be tempting. And, again for the record, public-access municipal Wi-Fi is going to be a huge success, globally. Even without the public-access part, though, muni Wi-Fi is just getting started.