Companies Partner to Deploy Muni Wi-Fi and Public Safety Pilot Network in Riverside

The latest announcement in a recent flurry of activity in the municipal Wi-Fi space is news that Riverside, Calif., will build a pilot municipal Wi-Fi and public safety network in partnership with Charter Communications Inc., InfiNet Wireless Ltd., Lockheed Martin Corp. and WiFi-CityWide LLC. The pilot will test the company’s ability to meet the requirements of its recent RFP to build out a 65-square-mile municipal broadband network.

WiFi-CityWide is the engineering and integration operator for the project. Their parent company, Baja Wireless, operates a 250-square-mile Wi-Fi network in Ensenada and Rosarito, Mexico, and Baja, Calif. InfiNet Wireless, a provider of BWA equipment in Eastern Europe and recent entrant to the North American market, is providing the wireless connectivity for both the public safety and the Wi-Fi portions of the network. Lockheed Martin Corp. will operate the public safety portion of the network, as well as provide the customer and technical support services. Charter Business, which provides broadband communications solutions to Riverside businesses, will be provisioning the bandwidth necessary for the pilot demonstration.

AT&T Inc. and MetroFi Inc. also responded to Wireless Riverside's RFP. Although that bid has apparently failed, it garnered attention because it showed RBOC interest in the muni wireless space. Incumbents previously have fought municipal Wi-Fi in the courts and before the FCC, claiming that cheap or free city-sponsored Wi-Fi amounts to an unfair competitive practice vis-a-vis RBOC DSL and other commercial broadband.

While questions as to QoS and business modeling dog the space, there are literally hundreds of RFPs, trials and deployments of municipal Wi-Fi across the country. Using a mesh architecture, cities are looking to partner with vendors and service providers to deploy cost-effective broadband for the purposes of public safety, economic development and closing the digital divide.

Baja Wireless www.bajawireless.com
Charter Communications Inc. www.charter.com
InfiNet Wireless Ltd. www.infinetwireless.com
Lockheed Martin Corp. www.lockheedmartin.com

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