Municipal Wi-Fi Developments: Silicon Valley, Minneapolis, Milton Keynes

Silicon Valley, California, will get municipal Wi-Fi thanks to the successful bid of a group called MetroConnect. The group, consisting of IBM, Cisco, and several wireless Internet firms, will unwire about a thousand square miles of Silicon Valley. Service will range from basic free to a variety of paid options. Cities in the region will not have to pay for any of the construction costs, but are expected to pay for service. Similarly, police forces in the area are expected to use paid services. Antenna towers will not start construction until January 2007. Service may take over a year.

I think that this move will result in a huge aftermarket for vendors wanting to offer mobile services and software to law enforcement. Imagine how much easier it would be for police officers to wirelessly access information on a suspect vehicle while in pursuit, for example. It’ll be interesting to see if municipal Wi-Fi, onceit spreads to more big cities, results in some sort of ehanced cooperation system between police forces.

Minneapolis, Minnesota will be unwired by DelAir Networks and  US Internet. The entire city will be covered with broadband access and will apparently result in one of the largest wireless cities in the US. I’d have to say, though, that 54 square miles pales in comparison to the 1000 sq mi of the Silicon Valley project. BelAir is also responsible for wireless mesh nodes in the City of London and Toronto, Canada. The latter network is being built in stages, and should prove to be fairly large eventually. Interestingly, they’re pushing “quad-play” services: voice, video, data and mobility. The latter is something that cable providers cannot offer with their triple-play services.

Milton Keynes, Florida, is going the WiMax route for municipal Wi-Fi. The network will be built by Airspan Networks and Pipex Wireless. The network will be operated by Ericsson. A six month trial of 500 users starts in December and if successful, the network will be extended geographically.