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Site Shuffling: Applications find a New Home

I'm rearranging furniture, as it were, so I thought I would give you a heads up. I will probably do more of this as I find the right combination to make information on this site easier to find and more convenient. Look for Applications (formerly, Uses of a Municipal Network) under the Leverage heading going forward.

As we get more and more familiar with broadband networks, as our level of sophistication grows, it becomes less and less compelling to realize that "I can get on the Internet and check my email, wherever I am" and more intriguing to realize "I can do 90% of what I currently do easier, cheaper, and faster by using broadband network technologies, sometimes on the Internet, sometimes on a local network." It sounds like a Dr. Seuss book, "Oh the Things You Will Do With Your Municipal Network" ... once you have a wireless network. So let's assume for a moment that you have your network - what now?

This is in fact a great exercise to go through in your planning phases (i.e., begin with the end in mind, don't start your network without a full understanding of its value to the community).

I asked a pair of knowledgable, experienced high tech salesman last week: "Do you think these networks will sell based on an understanding of the technology, or on the basis of solutions and applications - what you can do with a network?" They barely skipped a beat before answering in unison, "Applications." The solution business starts from the premise that the customer has a problem and wants a solution, not from the premise that the technology is COOL. So while it is typical of a very early stage market that the early buzz would be about the capabilities of the technology, we can expect to see more and more attention paid to the applications, as wired and wireless broadband networks become more accepted as an alternative service delivery mechanism.

A few cases in point concerning new applications, in recent conversations:

* Disaster Recovery Network, fixed or mobile - when nothing else works, your municipal network should, or you should be able to set up another one in a few hours time
* Intelligent Vehicle coordination, traffic light synchronization, parking meter collection, and other traffic purposes
* Emergency Medical services - video delivery to mobile units (X-rays, etc.)

I hope we see more and more of this type of reporting. I will collect articles on applications and park them here. So, please play along with me and let me know when you see a good application - I'd like to collect as many as I can and create more and more subcategories. I think this is where it really gets fun!

Posted on July 25, 2005 at 03:30 PM

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