Document Actions
Forget offering services to the public via Wi-Fi, think about saving taxpayer dollars through WiMAX first!
Want to get the political types talking in the US? Just bring up the topic of "free municipal Wi-Fi" and stand by to hear the howls of protest about how "the government intrudes on free market enterprise!" versus "if the big telcos won't do it, the public will!". Enough of that for now, I say, the election was last week. By the way, the big market for broadband access platforms might be in publicly owned and operated networks for government offices and operations.
This past week, I traveled around the state of Colorado making presentations on WiMAX as a guest of the Cisco Users Groups in Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Denver. Although my presentation was aimed at entrepreneurial opportunities using WiMAX, the audience that was most appreciative or demanding of further knowledge was comprised of employees of public entities. What about police, fire, ambulance services using WiMAX? The great news there is that they have their own frequency reserved for their use (4.9 GHz in the US). Did I mention some cool new technology that allows a policeman or fireman to make phone calls from their radio? Sure is handy in an emergency and the dispatcher is overwhelmed.
All those municipal buildings aren't going anywhere and fixed WiMAX products are now readily available. Oh and did I mention a popular WiMAX frequency is 2.5/2.6 GHz. Who owns a lot of the so-called Educational Broadcasting Services spectrum? Schools do. Who runs the schools? City and state governments, that's who. Ergo, rather than lease that spectrum out, city and state governments could be putting it to use to save money on telecom/datacom bills (use WiMAX not the phone company's T1s to link your offices). While that would seem the most obvious cost savings, another factor is making those public employees more efficient once broadband access is available city-wide.
Another part of my rant on WiMAX that applies to publicly owned users of WiMAX is the prospect for shopping your datacom and telecom needs. WiMAX can connect to any fiber PoP which enables a city government, for example, to shop bandwidth for price and service (Service Level Agreement) as well as disaster recovery (who loses their job when services are down?).
Frank Ohrtman,
WMX Systems
_____
tags:
