Submitted by ENCOM Wireless
Needing Dedicated Wireless Network Options
As demand for bandwidth surges and data plans grow cheaper, cellular networks worldwide are experiencing a phenomenon known as the “data crunch,” where supply simply can’t keep up.
And for essential service providers, such as municipalities and critical industries, this means that cellular networks can’t provide them with any guarantees that critical data will be available during a major event or emergency.
This lack of reliability is making other options, specifically municipal wide-area-networks, look increasingly attractive to cities worldwide.
The data crunch
Pressure on mobile networks grows daily as cheap data plans enable users of smartphones and G sticks, or dongles, to gobble up increasingly greater bandwidth anytime and anywhere.
As a result, cellular service providers are struggling. At the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association confer-ence in San Diego in October 2009, Federal Communications Commission head Julius Genachowski said even though available commercial spectrum in the U.S. was tripled this year, much more is needed.
“The biggest threat to the future of mobile in America is the
looming spectrum crisis,” said Genachowski, who predicts cellular traffic will increase by 30 times in the next four years. “What happens when every mobile user has an iPhone, a Palm Pre, a Blackberry Tour or whatever the next device is?” http://www.telecomasia.net/content/fcc-chief-warns-spectrum-crisis
Barriers to improvements
Some operators are addressing the issue by rationing band-width to restrict data speeds of heavy users, but all fret about long-term profitability. To guard against serving up slow data rates and service outages to customers, cell providers are faced with making costly improvements to service a con-sumer market where data-rate plan prices are only getting cheaper, thereby reducing revenues.
“When you look at what it costs to have unlimited data, especially in the U.S., it’s very cheap to buy a phone with unlimited data and there’s a lot of mobile applications that talk about how fast the bandwidth is, says Dan Szgatti, vice president of sales and marketing at ENCOM Wireless in Calgary, Canada. “The demand is growing versus supply.” “But, with a municipal wide-area network (MWAN), cities and critical industry have dedicated bandwidth that will enable their applications without having to share it or rely on service providers” says Szgatti.
MWAN to the rescue
Because an MWAN is owned by a municipality, the band-width is fast, secure, private and remains accessible even in times of emergency.
“The biggest difference between MWAN and a cellular network is with the MWAN, the city owns the [technology] infrastructure, they have dedicated bandwidth, and they can keep everything on their private network,” says Szgatti. “Whereas with the cellular service, they are using the internet to transmit all their information and they’re also sharing that bandwidth and radio spectrum with hundreds of thousands, quite possibly millions, of other people.”
Sharing bandwidth is one of the key pitfalls of a cellular network. During times of crisis, cell networks can become clogged with so many people wanting to access and share information.
“When there actually is an emergency, or even if there’s a big football game or other event, everyone is twittering and tweeting and fluttering and using data networks, so they’re not available for other services,” says Szgatti.
“After the 9/11 attacks for example, no cell phone channels were available, and no networks were available. There is no control over who can get online and who can’t in those cir-cumstances. So if a city doesn’t have their own infrastructure in place, they’re dead in the water.”
Case Study: Tragedy in Minneapolis
When the Minneapolis I-W Mississippi Bridge collapsed during rush hour on August 1, 2007, killing 1 and injuring 145, a fledgling MWAN supplying WiFi service to the area proved invaluable during rescue efforts.
Although the network was not complete at the time of the col-lapse, the city was able to quickly extend coverage to facilitate the creation of a command center close to the bridge.
Cellular “Data Crunch” Leaves Cities Needing Dedicated Wireless Network Options . . .
Continued from page 34“We got really lucky,” comments Lynn Willenbring, CIO for the City of Minneapolis. “We were just in the initial phases of deployment and we actually had the WiFi network de-ployed at the site where the bridge collapsed. We’d started in that area, just coincidently, as one of our pilot areas and built out from there.”
“So we did have WiFi coverage there at least on one bank of the river, and then our vendor helped bring the wireless from the other side of the river. “
The municipal WiFi network enabled police and fire teams to set up a command center in a tent in a parking lot near the site of the collapse. This network had to be fast and ro-bust enough to handle large, data-intensive Geographical Information Services (GIS) maps.
“There is no way that they could have downloaded or worked on all those heavy GIS maps, big bandwidth users, on a cellular network,” says Willenbring.
But by accessing the WiFi provided by the MWAN, emergen-cy responders quickly got the information they needed. “They were able to bring down these files, and were able to help police lay out where the secure perimeter was around the site, where the checkpoints were, identify where all those types of things were.”
Not only did the network enhance rescue efforts, it proved versatile enough to enable the secret service to plan a safe visit from the First Lady.
“The bridge collapsed Thursday evening, and the First Lady happened to be in town on Friday for another event. So of course she wanted to come over and observe it and lend her support,” says Willenbring.
“They were very impressed with what we were able to provide them from a mapping standpoint. We were able to say, ‘Here’s where the checkpoints are, here’s where she can come in,’ and they were like, ‘Really? You did this that fast?’ And yes, we could, because we had that capability on site.”
The city also leveraged the ample WiFi network to install three IP-addressable, Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) enabled cameras to give disparate teams an eye on the disaster site. “With the pan-tilt-zoom capabilities of those cameras, we controlled them in our emergency operations center and we could give the Sheriff’s Department, the De-partment of Transportation, and the Navy Seals that came in to help the IP addresses and they could see what we were seeing.”
At the time of writing, Minneapolis’ WiFi network is a few months away from complete deployment across all 9 square
January/February 2010 Continued from page 36
miles of the city. The network is segmented into public and private sections, and the city retains absolute priority over bandwidth.
The private segment is sold wholesale to businesses and citizens at economical rates, guaranteeing residents 1MB broadband at a capped rate of no more than $1.9 USD per month for the next ten years. A percentage of income generated is channelled into a digital inclusion fund, helping approved organizations access the technology they need.
Mobility applications
A key advantage of a mesh-network powered MWAN is its ability to en-able a city`s mobile workforce to stay connected via either seamless connec-tivity or nomadic mobility (wireless hotspots), depending on how the system is configured.
“For example, let’s imagine deliver-ing data to a laptop in a police car. An MWAN would be able to provide ac-cess to this information at high speeds via a reliable, dedicated network.” says Szgatti.
Emergency response teams aren’t the only ones to benefit from mobility ap-plications, however. With an MWAN in place, municipalities can use mobil-ity applications in conjunction with fixed applications to increase the ef-ficiency of and raise service levels for traffic systems, public safety, utilities management, building inspectors, maintenance personnel, and, impor-tantly, public transportation.
For public transit, MWAN-enabled advanced passenger information systems can deliver up to the minute bus times and schedule information
to variable message signs or cell phones at bus and subway stops, transit vehicles can be given priority at traffic lights, and security systems can increase peace of mind for riders and drivers alike.
“In terms of security, if there was an issue on the bus, you could have onboard video cameras that people in an opera-tions center could use to take a look at what’s happening on a bus and offer support during an incident,” adds Szgatti.
Cellular “Data Crunch” Leaves Cities Needing Dedicated Wireless Network Options . . .
Continued from page 37Szgatti says turning transit into a more “green” operation is another pos-sibility with the options that an MWAN provides.
“Typically, when you look at the amount of man hours and fuel wasted by transit vehicles sitting at red lights for example, it all adds up to millions of dollars in time wasted, vehicles idling, plus the amount of extra energy it takes to bring a stopped vehicle up to fully moving. So by using MWAN-enabled vehicle priority systems to improve the efficiency of traffic flow for these large vehicles, it really adds up in terms of overall productivity and reduced environmental impact as well.”
“All these things increase the efficiency of public transit and within that the overall transportation system, making public transit a more attractive alternative for people, which can in turn increase ridership and revenues for the city.”
The versatility of an MWAN
A distinct advantage of MWANs is how flexible and future-minded they are. They can not only work with existing infrastructure, but also provide a launching pad for other applications. These other applications may stem from different city departments, providing an opportunity for cost-sharing as well as agility.
“When you think about building a municipal wireless network, rather than just focussing on creating a traffic network, IT network, police network, the school system, and all these individual departments, you’re pooling money and combining resources together,” says Szgatti.
It’s not just mobility applications that make MWANs so attractive to forward-thinking municipalities. Fixed applications like automatic meter reading for utilities departments, security cameras, vehicle detection systems, and
more, provide a platform for building up and continuously improving communications.
“With a municipal wireless mesh network, in place, adding any type of network device is very simple, whether they are fixed or mobile applications. If you’ve already got that MWAN communication layer in place, you can literally just drop in a new site. You don’t need to add additional infrastructure.” “If traffic engineers want to put a major intersection online, and they put the right technology in that intersection, they can also enable other applications. Rather than building a simple low-speed point to multipoint network there, if the munici-pality brings in the broadband mesh equipment to build an MWAN with multiple applications on the same system, they can save costs and increase their capacity to do other things at the same time.
So then, if that city wants to do, say, automatic meter readings throughout that neighbourhood, they just build another layer onto the channel that exists already. It’s an extremely power-ful concept.”
After hearing all the reports of cellular networks struggling through increasingly larger chunks of data, spats over spectrum shortages, and so much mobile noise and chatter in general, it’s comforting to know that MWANs are quietly inspiring cooperation and enabling future-mindedness in our cities.
January/February 2010 t7FIJDMFQSFTFODFEFUFDUJPOBUTJHOBMJ[FEJOUFSTFDUJPOT t4UPQCBSBOEBEWBODFEFUFDUJPO t4USFBNJOHWJEFP t"MMJOPOFTFOTPS DBNFSB EFUFDUPS t"CPWFHSPVOETFOTPS t.1&(JNBHFDPNQSFTTJPO t*1BEESFTTBCJMJUZ t%JSFDUWJTVBMGFFECBDL t&BTZJOTUBMMBUJPO POMZUXPXJSFT t2VJDLDPOåHVSBUJPO t3FMJBCMFEFUFDUJPO t'JFMEQSPWFOWFIJDMFQSFTFODFEFUFDUJPOBMHPSJUIN KEY FUNCTIONALITIES KEY BENEFITS WWW.TRAFICONUSA.COM
Eastern USA: www.cttraffi c.com Western USA: www.kargor.com
TRAF_ProdAd_xStream_IMSA R1.indd 1 23/06/09 09:22
For more information on municipal wireless networks, contact: Dan Szgatti ENCOM Wireless Direct: 0-20-117 Cell: 0-80-11 [email protected] skype: dans_encom
About ENCOM Wireless:
ENCOM, based in Calgary, Canada, pro-vides field-proven, cost-effective wireless data solutions for municipal and industrial clients, with applications in the areas of:
· Intelligent transportation systems · Public safety communications
· Municipal corporate security and IT networks
· Waste and waste water management · Electrical utilities
· Oil and gas
Wireless Network Options . . .
Continued from page 38SIDEBAR
The advantage of MWAN networks: Cost effective to install
Future-minded and easy to expand and adapt Delivers higher bandwidth than cellular net-works
Dedicated, failsafe networks
Ensures reliable communications in times of crisis
Provides options for city departments to pool resources and leverage existing infrastructure Eliminates ongoing costs to service providers
Introducing
IMSA’s
new “Camp Shirt”
This shirt sells for $40
and is currently available in Black/Large and Black/X-Large.
IMSA is embroidered in white over the left breast pocket.
