Government Unplugged- Cities go Wireless

City officials in Menlo Park, Calif., were looking at fixed wireless only as a cost-effective backup to their T1 line, but
wound up replacing their wired connection to the Net entirely.

govtech.net

"We’ve shifted our philosophy," said Danny Daniels, systems and programming manager of Menlo Park. "We’re
using fixed wireless as the primary connection and our T1 as a back up."

Daniels said the cost of fixed wireless, at around $500 a month, is much cheaper than a T1 line, and the initial
set-up costs were comparable.

All city agencies and the city’s approximately 300 employees now access the Net via fixed wireless, Daniels said.
He cited ease of use and lack of maintenance as other important factors behind the city’s decision to go with fixed
wireless.

"There’s really no premise equipment, so in terms of configuring routers and whatnot, all the setup is handled by the
ISP," he said. "They provide you with the telco box, and you interface directly with that."

Another California city, Dublin, also chose fixed wireless for Internet access for approximately 150 city employees.

Installation took less than a day, said Steve Pappa, information systems manager of Dublin.

"We paid about 50 percent more, previously, for a connection that was at 64K," he said. "What we have now is a
minimum of 1Mbps, burstable to 2Mbps; it’s like night and day, and we’re paying about $250 [per] month less."

The city is saving money because, unlike before, it isn’t paying to lease a T1 line and paying for Internet access.

Dublin switched to fixed wireless in December, Pappa said.

"We were skeptical," he said. "We went with a month-to-month agreement. We made them get the building permit
and go through all the planning approvals, and they did all that and complied. Everybody is happy with the system
so far."

Both cities are contracting with NextWeb for fixed wireless Internet access.

http://www.govtech.net/magazine/story.phtml?id=3030000000007574&issue=05:2002