Broadband Municipal Wireless Networks

Course Overview

At the end of this course, you'll have practical templates for you and your municipal stakeholders to complete, which formalise a process of designing your wireless network. You'll be able to guide the decision-making on services to offer, development of the initial business case, and selection of a network ownership/operations model. You'll have enough technical understanding to discuss intelligently what Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and various proprietary wireless options can contribute to your community. You'll have a better sense of what tasks you can tackle in-house versus what tasks you'll want to outsource to an engineering services organisation.

Audience

This seminar is created for management personnel who are considering a municipal, public safety, or campus Broadband Wireless network, and who need an unbiased, technology-neutral overview of financial, technical, and architectural options. Our expert municipal-network planners share their experience, outlining a step-by-step approach to evaluation of alternatives for your custom network solution.

Course Outline

Introduction to the LEVER Mesh Planning Process

• Four modules of Background Knowledge
• Municipal Broadband Planning Steps
• Skill Sets Required on your team
• Practical Tools

Background Knowledge: Wireless Applications

• Residential and Commercial Broadband
• Is there a business case for a second or third residential broadband provider?
• Public Safety
• Fixed data and video cameras
• Mobile data
• Increased Automation of Municipal Operations
• Public Works
• Public Transportation
• Education
• Municipalities as anchor tenants
• What our experience tells us about target applications

Background Knowledge: Wireless Technologies

• Overview of a Municipal Broadband Wireless network
• Wi-Fi as a compelling access technology
• Mesh network attributes
• Reduced backhaul requirements
• Reliability
• Reduced network engineering
• Single vs. multiple-radio options
• WiMAX's present and future, including mobility
• Pre-Standard options
• Frequency bands available for Municipal Wireless
• Relative strengths and weaknesses of each technology
• Worldwide deployment status of each technology

Background Knowledge: Industry Players

• Leading Wi-Fi vendors
• Leading WiMAX vendors
• Leading vendors of non-standard solutions
• Systems Integrators
• ISPs pursuing Municipal Broadband

Background Knowledge: Case Studies with various Business Models

• Philadelphia: The Earthlink model of a large Public/Private partnership
• Mid-size city Public/Private Partnership
• Municipally-owned utility case study
• Rural US Municipal Broadband case study
• Sources of Funding

Municipal Broadband Planning Steps

• Assessing the needs
• Selecting the Services
• Choosing the business model
• Analysing the Frequency and technology options
• First-cut Financial Model, and decision to proceed
• Request for Proposal
• Vendor evaluation and selection
• Detailed Design and Implementation
• Optimisation, Maintenance, and Planning for technology upgrades

Skill Sets required on your team

• Market Research for Business Case Analysis
• RF Engineering
• Financial planning
• Project Management

Practical Municipal Mesh Planning Tools, and how to use them

• Take-home Application and Service Planning Worksheet
• Technology job aid: Strengths and Weaknesses
• Frequency job aid: Strengths and Weaknesses
• CAPEX and payback estimation spreadsheet
• Demonstration of EDX Wireless SignalPro(R) software tool, with SignalMX Mesh Network Design module