So today I was in Concord producing a shoot about the city rolling out a free wireless network.
Why would a city want to do this. Well, there are a few reasons. Number one is to reduce communications costs for city workers. Turns out Concord was dropping more than $100,000 a month on communications for its city employees. Instead of paying out for multiple carriers for land data, wireless data, and voice, they can save considerably by consolidating with one provider. In addition, since so many city workers are mobile, they can do their job more efficiently, by inputting and looking up data wirelessly from the field. Then there’s the use by emergency workers like police and fire.
So once in place there is the added value to local businesses and to residents. And that in turn results in a business and resident attractor and hopefully helps in keeping them.
Concord’s Wi-Fi is an example of private enterprise working in a partnership with municipal government. Ownership of the network has been a point of contention. Because what happens is the companies that install the networks retain ownership of the network that’s on city property. Many city officials argue they wouldn’t let a private company that paves their roads maintain ownership of the roads. But it turns out that if a city does want to maintain ownership of their wireless network, it would simply be cost prohibitive. So in the case of Concord, MetroFi, the company that is installing the network are the ones that own it.
Mayor Mark Peterson says it’s a win-win. Everyone benefits. I guess that’s for us to all find out when it gets fully rolled out. It looks and sounds great, but when you’re going to install a network, you don’t know how it’s going to be used until it’s fully rolled out. So we’ll have to wait to truly to see the success of this network from a cost reduction standpoint, and from how the residents in the city use it.
According to MetroFi and the city’s IT director, pulling this off successfully requires a roll out and the challenges of how to cover the entire land. It’s currently covering a two-mile area in the city centered around Todos Santos Plaza.
