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June 18, 2007

Metro Round-Up: Sacramento (Calif.); Ocean City (NJ); Anchorage (Alaska); Penn.; Dharamsala (India); EarthLink Kiosks

By Glenn Fleishman

Sacramento council about to vote on authorizing Wi-Fi plan: The consortium building Wireless Silicon Valley (less IBM, plus Intel) also seems poised to run a 100 sq mi network in Sacramento, California’s capital. Intel is part of this venture, Sacramento Metro Connect; they were barred from the Silicon Valley project as they helped put together the RFP. Sacramento lost its first network builder, now called Kite Networks, which balked after winning the bid at the level of free service the city desired. SMC will offer 1 Mbps ad-supported best-effort service, which could lag in favor of paid 1 Mbps and 3 Mbps offerings ($15 and $50 per month, respectively).

Ocean City, NJ, solicits bids for Wireless Wave operator: The city has a unique pitch in that they have just 16,000 full-time residents—but add 150,000 visitors over the summer. They expect $13m in revenue for an operator over five years based on the demand from the summer folk. I can completely see that, too. Most families want Internet access, regardless of work obligations, when they’re away from home. Put VoIP on top of that to keep the teenagers’ calling bills low, and you’ve got a winning deal.

Anchorage, Alaska, picks MetroFi: No other national firm with previous deals in the bidding, except Clearwire, which can only offer its own asymmetrical mobile WiMax-like styling. The rollout will start with downtown. A city assembly has to approve the deal, which could happen June 26.

Spotty usage in two Penn. towns’ Wi-Fi networks: The downtown networks of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre aren’t seeing much usage. Perhaps 200 monthly users in the larger Wilkes-Barre area, and 25 to 30 in a smaller Scranton hotzone. Gateway Access, the firm that built out the service, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January, but has sight of emergence. Wilkes-Barre chose Frontier to build out the entire city, with a launch in August. (“What, no ‘The Office’ jokes?”)

Dharamsala, India, mesh network continues to expand: 50 nodes, 2,000 computers, with VoIP and videoconferencing.

EarthLink Wi-Fi accounts can be bought by kiosk: The kiosk approach, developed by GetConnected, Inc., will allow EarthLink to work with retail partners like Best Buy and Circuit City, Wi-Fi Planet reports.

Posted by Glennf at June 18, 2007 1:35 PM

Categories: Metro-Scale Networks, Municipal

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