Municipal Wi-Fi Be Pursued? Municipal

¶ … Municipal Wi-Fi Be Pursued?

Municipal W-Fi Growth Strategies:

Funding by Government & Private Sectors

The creation and continual enhancement of communications platforms is not option for municipalities, cities and regions globally. Just as telephone service is available in nearly all remote rural regions of the United States with the exception of severe pockets of poverty, wireless access also needs to follow this trajectory of growth and implementation. The Return on Investment (ROI) of creating, sustaining and fine-tuning a municipal Wi-Fi network can be quantified across the economic, social and quality of life improvements for constituents and businesses alike (Tang, Baker, 2002). The intent of this analysis is to show why investing in a Municipal Wi-Fi is an investment that needs to be shared across government and private sectors.

Analysis of Municipal Wi-Fi Potential and Why Government & Private Sectors Need to Both Invest

Metropolitan Wi-Fi, despite its costs and the challenges to adoption by consumers, continues to be proven a strong catalyst of economic growth. Metropolitan-based Wi-Fi networks are credited with new venture creation and the ability of small business to achieve critical mass due to this essential element of their infrastructure being underwritten by government investment (Huang, Chang, 2008). The differentiating aspect of Metropolitan Wi-Fi relative to other government subsidized programs is their more utilitarian aspects of use and the greater multiplier effect on economic growth when provided at a service level that can sustain small business and consumer traffic (O'Shea, 2006). The costs of Metropolitan Wi-Fi can be prohibitive however, whence the need for more hybrid-based funding strategies that involve both government and private sector funding.

Many of the most successful Metropolitan W-Fi networks are based on the IEEE 802.16 standard, which is also compatible with the globally adopted and recognized 802.11 standard (Zhang, Schiffman, Gibbs, Kunjithapatham, Jeong, 2009). There is 100% data replication and support across these two IEEE standards including support for data security and encryption (Huang, Chang, 2008). All of these developments in Metropolitan Wi-Fi development are leading to greater levels of communication, collaboration and coordination across the many small businesses in a metropolitan area who benefit from a solid wireless infrastructure platform to conduct business over (O'Shea, 2006). The build-out of Metropolitan Wi-Fi has also shown that the costs of shared services throughout a metro and suburban governments can be greatly reduced. The emergence of Wi-Fi enabled emergency services, from telephone to medical respondents, have all been shown to be more cost-effective when managed over a Wi-Fi network (Tang, Baker, 2002). City and municipal governments can also benefit greatly from the development of a Municipal Wi-Fi network in that fire, police, safety and medical equipment can be more effectively optimized in its used across broad geographic areas (Zhang, Schiffman, Gibbs, Kunjithapatham, Jeong, 2009). Using these forms of communication would also allow for greater responsiveness to emergency situations and a more effective series of strategies for managing ongoing communications across all government agencies in a given metro area. As both private industry and government benefit from a metropolitan Wi-Fi, both need to share in its costs as well (Tang, Baker, 2002).

A Technology Capable of Shared Ownership Across Government and Private Industry

The underlying technological foundations of WiMax concentrate on a consortium-based approach to defining specific aggregation, transmission, measurement of performance and optimal usage scenarios for metropolitan-wide Wi-Fi networks (Zhang, Schiffman, Gibbs, Kunjithapatham, Jeong, 2009). In short, the technology platform lends itself well to a funding strategy that includes both government and private sector funding. The structure of a typical WiMAX Scenario is shown in Figure 1. He support for a multitude of different clients, base station, transmission, aggregation and multi-service core functionality are all easily segmented by government vs. private sector funding and use.