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San Marcos Texas Progress Report

Tomorrow's a big day for San Marcos, Texas. First day of Oral Presentations in their search for a wireless network vendor.

We've come a long way in this little college town in Central Texas. I last wrote in detail on this project two months ago, in a posting titled For a Change, How about Trying Cooperation and Convergence on September 3. You can download a copy of the RFP here. You'll find that it's a pretty thorough approach that blends wired and wireless technologies, is open to different business models, and focuses on municipal applications. I wrote it - I'm really quite proud of it. Check it out.

Here's an update of milestones to date in San Marcos:
* June - RFP Respondent Pre Sell: 45 companies contacted - Incumbents (3); Natl Providers (10); Regional Providers (22); Equipment (7); Media (3)
* July 2 - RFP Posted / Distributed
* July 19 - RFP PreProposal Conference - Over 100 in attendance, 47 companies represented
* September 27 - Nine RFP Responses Received
* November 13, 16 - Oral Interviews with Five Short Listed Vendors

Seems we're not alone in pluggin' away, as this author in the piece below cites continuing progress in the Wireless Mesh marketplace, despite all the bad news of late ...

Amid the wails of disappointment and recrimination echoing around the U.S. market, one salient fact about the outdoor wireless mesh sector doesn't seem to be getting a great deal of attention: The equipment market continues to see strong growth, so someone must be buying the stuff. The latest update to Heavy Reading's Wireless Mesh Equipment Market Tracker estimates that wireless mesh equipment shipments grew to 112,200 units in the 12 months to June 2007, up from 60,300 in the previous 12-month period.

These shipments certainly aren't going into muni-led build outs in Chicago, San Francisco, or New York, nor are they going into EarthLink Inc. Those headline-grabbing plans have been laid to rest (much less quietly than their originators would have liked). So where is all the growth coming from?

It turns out, most of it is still coming from the United States. Vendors such as Tropos Networks Inc. and BelAir Networks Inc. have nearly doubled their shipments over the last year, with more than 70 percent of shipments going to North American customers. These shipments are clearly not going into the big cities. The undertaking is too large for a turbo-charged, short-range technology that uses unlicensed spectrum. In built-up cities that are home to hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of highly mobile people - and with 3G, cable, and broadband DSL alternatives to choose from - that was never going to fly.

Instead, demand is coming from mid-sized towns and cities with smaller populations, kinder building topographies, and, in some cases, more streamlined and effective local government policy makers. For example, some of Tropos' customers include Milipitas, Calif., Oklahoma City, Savannah, Ga., and Tucson, Ariz. Demand is also coming from private companies building out small 10 and 20-node networks for private and public use. One interesting model that Tropos reports seeing is that of universities in the U.S. and Mexico buying its equipment, deploying it on campus, and then extending coverage into the local town. The downtown networks are primarily for the students, but potentially for local residents as well. Sorry, Haters: Wireless Mesh Soldiers On

Posted on November 12, 2007 at 04:57 PM

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