“Our overarching objective was to deploy a best-of-class wireless backbone that would support all our current and future networking needs,” said Alan DeLoera, IT director for the city of Temple. “BridgeWave’s ‘future-proof’ backhaul technology allows us to get a jump on various public safety and security applications while protecting our network infrastructure investments and allowing us to deliver superior services to the city’s employees, residents and businesses.”

The city’s 18-member IT team is responsible for supporting 650 employees working at 32 buildings and facilities across a sprawling 70-square-mile footprint. While City Hall and major facilities—including the police station, fire station, library, public works building, courthouse and fleet maintenance center—are connected via fiber-optic links, the remaining sites initially utilized an ad hoc combination of low-speed wireless, T1, ISDN, DSL and cable modem solutions, according to BridgeWave Communications.

Network congestion, bandwidth limitations and unreliable performance of aging 5.8 GHz radios led the team to explore other cost-effective connectivity methods. Temple’s 10 water towers, which form a ring around the city, provided an excellent line-of-sight solution for reaching most locations. With assistance from Redmoon Inc., a Plano, Texas-based wireless technologies provider, Temple created a high-capacity wireless backbone, incorporating seven BridgeWave field-upgradeable 80 GHz wireless links with a 5.8GHz mesh access system. According to BridgeWave, the self-healing network aggregates and backhauls traffic over a mesh-ring topology with built-in redundancy for maximum service availability.

City plans to add ‘hot zones’ for public safety officials

In addition to dramatically improved data connectivity, the high-speed network is proving instrumental in the city’s rapid effort to install video surveillance cameras on all city buildings and public works facilities. Temple also is migrating traffic from its previously separate traffic-signal monitoring, public safety and fresh-water infrastructure monitoring applications onto the wireless backbone.

Other plans call for adding a series of Wi-Fi “hot zones” around the city to provide police, fire and city employees with field access to central servers over the high-speed network. Since new network nodes can be quickly and easily deployed, an opportunity also has been identified to set up temporary mobile data locations around the city as part of a far-reaching disaster recovery plan.

“BridgeWave’s field-upgradeable wireless links give the city of Temple unmatched flexibility in supporting its networking needs for the next decade,” said Gregg Levin, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for BridgeWave. “Over time, the city will be able to extend network capacity easily and only pay for additional bandwidth as needed.”

City forecasts ROI in less than 3 years

The city of Temple forecasts a complete return on investment (ROI) on its high-speed wireless network in less than three years. Temple also estimates an annual savings of $100,000 by connecting the city’s facilities over a wireless network and projects an additional savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars in network deployment costs and access fees.

For more information on how the city of Temple built its high-speed wireless network, attend a free Webinar presented by Government Product News and BridgeWave Communications. To register for the Webinar, which will take place Feb. 6, click here.