New technology, stimulus funding help revive municipal broadband

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Municipal broadband often brings up negative connotations thanks to the failures of some very large muni-Wi-Fi programs in 2008. However, some communities have found that broadband networks can save them money by using them as their primary network for multiple city departments. In fact, technology enhancements, wireless spectrum availability and creative funding have combined to lift municipal broadband projects off the ground.


Craig Settles, head of Successful.com, says a number of municipalities have capitalized on such a strategy. For instance, three years ago, Oklahoma City launched a muni-wireless broadband network using equipment from Tropos Networks covering 555 square miles. Today it has been adopted as the primary network used by all city departments. 


Mark Meier, Oklahoma City’s chief technology officer recently indicated that the city has derived approximately $10 million in value from its broadband network to date. “Some of our critical public safety applications required redundant wireless connectivity, but the cellular data cards have remained virtually unused and handle less than 1 percent of our traffic which has resulted in significant cost savings for the city,” he says.



City departments using the network include police, fire, transit, public works and IT. And the network has more than 200 applications concurrently running over it. Devices include laptops, handheld devices, traffic controllers and video cameras. 



In most cases, public safety is the anchor-tenant of the network and other government agencies come along for the ride, Settles says. Public safety benefits the most from a variety of applications, ranging from video surveillance to web-based crime database access. 



“Public safety often plays the lead as long as the public-safety group is open-minded enough to allow other folks to use the network,” he says. “That is a political challenge, not a technology challenge.”



Earlier this month, wireless standards bodies ratified what is known as the 802.11n standard — a super-charged Wi-Fi technology that dramatically changes the capabilities and economies of wireless broadband business because it bumps Wi-Fi’s theoretical performance ten-fold and increases the range three times that of the existing Wi-Fi standard. 



That capability is particularly important to outdoor networks, which have been successful in smaller zones but have difficulty being deployed longer range without a significant amount of hardware and expense. The new capacity also means a municipality can cost effectively enable public safety users to access video surveillance while also enabling other functions such as meter reading to be wirelessly enabled and over a larger area. Eventually, local governments could then offer access to their citizens and begin to blanket larger portions of the municipality. 



Settles recommends that municipalities view broadband networks as critical infrastructure. “This is no different than governments building an airport,” he says. As such, a number of creative ways exist to fund these networks. 



The most obvious one is the federal government’s broadband stimulus grant and loan program. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), along with the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) program, are granting and loaning some $7.2 billion in stimulus money that is to be used to bring broadband to unserved and underserved areas. The first round of applications has passed, which will see entities receive some $4 billion, but the government will release the remaining funds in 2010. 



The first round was significantly over-subscribed. For the first round, some 2,200 entities applied for nearly $28 billion in stimulus money from both the NTIA and the RUS. Applications came in from a diverse range of parties including state, local and tribal governments; non-profits; industry; anchor institutions, such as libraries, universities, community colleges and hospitals; public-safety organizations; and other entities in rural, suburban and urban areas, NTIA said.



But the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act emphasizes public safety’s use of broadband. Settles noted that a number of the applications propose a mixed-use capability, whereby consumers, public safety and other government functions benefit.



But making public safety the anchor tenant also allows municipalities to tap into Department of Homeland Security funds and public-safety bond measures. Cities can also tack on broadband deployments in other bond initiatives.



“One community added broadband to a bond that upgraded all of its schools,” Settles says. “There are a number of bond issues that broadband can be tied into.”



For News and Information about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), go here.

Lynnette Luna is a contributing writer to Urgent Communications, a sister publication to Government Product News.