All Municipal Networks are Custom Networks

POPs to support a wireless mesh network?); 4) congestion (how many other users are on the available spectrum) and 5) proposed uses of network (this is where the design gets variable fast).

This section focuses on that last category - what purpose will the new network serve? What is the vision of the city? what will the network be used for? In the end, a network is merely a pipe - the challenge and the potential benefit lies in what goes through that pipe.

Typically, cities have looked at security and public safety as a primary use for these new networks. This is for two reasons: first, after 9/11, security is on everyone's mind; second, the aging land mobile radio (LMR) systems of different public safety entities make replacement of radio a key strategic concern. Wireless broadband is arriving at an opportune time.

Accordingly, UnwireMyCity suggests this hierarchy of needs for a wireless broadband network, moving from anchor tenancy to retail services:

1) Public Safety: funds are available, and this is a need that all citizens will benefit from. Applications include video surveillance from fixed wireless points for violent crime reduction (in high crime areas, a la New Orleans); mobile data access for public safety officers to take them out of their offices where they must go to fill out reports and put them back on the street for longer hours, where they can fight crime; video surveillance for property crime reduction; and video surveillance at traffic stops with lapel cameras. This is an area of rapid growth and more applications will be detailed in the near term.

2) Public Services: any field service worker will benefit from having access to mobile data, including case workers, parking meter readers,
and others who work away from the office. The benefit of a metropolitan network is to bring the applications out from the desk into the field, and bring the data in from the field into the enterprise.

3) Utility Operations: as with public service workers, utility workers benefit from having more options for voice and data broadband communications; and utility operations benefit from improved field data for better management, from automated meter reading, and from video surveillance on trouble accounts and critical infrastructure.

4) Wholesale Leasing Operations: when more competitors can be brought in to provide Internet access, voice, and video, the city benefits from having a large tenant to cover its costs, and the citizens benefit from increased competition that brings rates down.

5) Digital Divide: citizens benefit from gaining access to high speed Internet connections at an affordable rate, where none existed before; citizens also benefit when those Internet connections can be used to provide voice and video services at more competitive rates.