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Awards honor local governments for community momentum building, digital inclusion, technology innovation, e-government applications, workforce productivity improvement, and local municipal initiative

SAN MATEO, Calif. (October 11, 2005) To pay tribute to local governments around the world implementing broadband-wireless solutions for cities, counties and regions, the Wireless Internet Institute announced the winners of the first-ever Wireless Communities Best Practices Awards at the W2i Digital Cities Convention (West), San Mateo Marriott (San Francisco Airport), October 1012, 2005.

Winners were chosen by the Jury from a field of 12 finalists, which were announced at a dinner and ceremony on the evening of October 11: A.N.P.C.I. (Italy), Chaska (MN), Corpus Christi (TX), Jigawa State (Nigeria), Lenexa (KS), Medford (OR), Piraí and Rio de Janeiro State (Brazil), Portsmouth (UK), Scottsburg (IN), Tempe (AZ), Washington (DC), Westminster (UK).

Personally accepting awards on behalf of their communities and delivering informal remarks were Governor Ibrahim Turaki, Jigawa State, Nigeria; Mr. Leonard Scott, Wi-Fi Project Leader, Corpus Christi, Texas; and Mr. John Domblides, ITS Team Leader, Portsmouth City Council, Portsmouth, United Kingdom.

For full details, please visit http://w2idigitalcitiesconvention.com/awards/index.html

2005 AWARD WINNERS

Technology Innovation
Portsmouth, United Kingdom

More than 220,000 vehicles move in and out of Portsmouth each day. But only three narrow bridges and seven lanes connect this island city to mainland England.

To encourage greater use of the city’s 300 buses and ease traffic congestion, in 2004 Portsmouth connected its GPS bus tracking system to a Wi-Fi mesh network to provide arrival and departure times on bright LCD displays in new stainless steel and glass bus shelters around the city.

On top of this, each of the 36 bus stops and 9 freestanding information points provide Internet and community facilities such as job listings and even video games for the kids to cut down on vandalism.

Today, Portsmouth’s intelligent-transport network is among the largest in the world, with 450 nodes of which 300 are mobile. The network is now supports multiple applications such as live video streaming from buses.

Community Momentum Building
Piraí, Brazil

The remote hill town of Pirai, 80 km north of Rio, has seen its struggles over the years. Because of privatization of the local power utility and layoffs by the pulp and paper industry, Piraí has the loss of 4,000 jobs.

But the mayor, Luis Fernando de Souza Pezão, wasn’t about to give up on his town. “Bigfoot,” as the mayor is nicknamed, used all his political savvy to pull together two dozen public and private sector partners to build a high-speed broadband network to revive Piraí streamlining city operations and providing citizens with the economic and social benefits of digital inclusion.

In the wake of Piraí’s success, the governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro has launched a Digital Municipalities initiative and hired Mayor De Souza to help connect 92 more towns and cities around the state.

Digital Inclusion
Jigawa State, Nigeria

There are few telephones to speak of in Nigeria’s arid Jigawa State. As recently as 2001, the population of four million mostly poor farmers had no information technology let alone dial-up Internet access over clunky copper-wire infrastructure.

But when Governor Ibrahim Turaki took office in 2000, he decided to change all this and he wasn’t waiting for Nigeria’s telco or cellular operators to help. With $6 million in World Bank grants and state and federal monies, the governor bought two satellite dishes and set up 47 access points to connect schools, libraries, cyber cafes and a new university with Wi-Fi access. The state buys bandwidth from a European company at considerable expense, but it can now bring voice, data, and video capabilities to schools, university students, and local economic players. Local authorities facilitate the rollout with real-estate rights of way.

The next phase includes a massive voice-over IP network to provide low-cost mobile voice services across the state and into neighboring jurisdictions.

Local Government Workforce Productivity Improvement
Westminster, United Kingdom

Each day, more than a million people enter central London, posing a tremendous challenge to the Westminster City Council, which must manage competing pressures between residents and visitors and demand for round-the-clock services.

The city council has deployed a wireless network and 40 mobile CCTV cameras in London’s West End to help police control crime and monitor different types activity, including terrorism.

The network will also increase coordination and productivity among the city’s thousands of frontline workers, including the city-council’s own street-based staff, parking attendants, inspectors, street cleaners, and wardens dealing with graffiti, rubbish, broken streetlights and dumped cars. Wireless-enabled PDAs in the hands of parking attendants and inspectors will improve reporting quality, reducing the number of public complaints.

Graham Ellis, Director of Policy and Communications says: “The people on the outside are our eyes and ears. If we give frontline workers the right tools for the job, you can start to enhance their role. You’re making them feel more powerful in managing the city.”

E-Government Applications
Corpus Christi, Texas

Two years ago, Corpus Christi wanted to automate data collection from utility meters around the city, but it didn’t want to pay recurring cellular costs to do it. A Wi-Fi mesh network would avoid those fees, and the excess bandwidth could be used to transform how the city’s 2,000+ mobile workers perform their jobs. Streaming video would make emergency first responders more efficient. The network would connect police officer and firefighters to local, state, and federal databases.

But Corpus also went a step further: Thanks to sophisticated bandwidth and subscriber management software, it is opening its infrastructure to multiple public and private user groups to provide a roster of present and future applications and services to the community.

The city actively invites experimentation and encourages partnerships, making its 24-square-mile infrastructure available as a test bed for wireless systems and applications developers.

Local Municipal Initiative
Scottsburg, Indiana

Thirty miles north of Louisville, Kentucky, sits Scottsburg, Indiana the town that broadband forgot. No matter how hard Scottsburg tried, it could not deliver connectivity to its local business and residents.

Then, in 2001, its mayor, Bill Graham, learned that Scottsburg and Scott County were on the brink of an economic crisis. A local military supplier nearly lost a million-dollar contract because it couldn’t e-mail a proposal on time. A local car dealer and its 72 employees were about to leave town because mechanics couldn’t download service manuals.

Mayor Graham and a small team jumped into action even requesting a spectrum analysis on Christmas Eve. Within four months, the town had put in place a broadband-wireless infrastructure for businesses and residents alike at a tune of $385,000. Everything is managed locally, and the city does its own billing.

Mayor Graham says: “Are we successful? We think so. We just wanted to take care of our folks in Scottsburg.”

ONES TO WATCH

Washington, DC

Responding to emergency events such as multiple-alarm building fires, chemical or biological attacks, or large-scale terrorist incidents requires immediate and rapid communications among multiple first-responders, including fire, police, and emergency medical services.

The District of Columbia has implemented a cost-effective, high-speed, city-wide, wireless data network to enable the use of interoperable, broadband, wireless data applications for public safety communications.  Using the Wireless Accelerated Responder Network, or WARN, first responders are able to use full-motion, high-resolution video monitoring and other bandwidth-intensive monitoring tools to immediately share time-critical information in the Washington DC area.

District network users include police, fire, emergency management, corrections department, among several other agencies.  WARN is an Orthagonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) network operating in the 700 MHz band under the provisions of a experimental license from the FCC.

Tempe, Arizona

Metro-area deployments can get a big boost when a high-level champion puts his or her weight behind the plan. Tempe, Arizona, has two the mayor and the president of Arizona State University. The two agreed to support a broadband-wireless deployment that would connect residents, visitors, students and local-government workers alike.

They asked Tempe’s IT department to do community outreach through announcements on utility bills, press conferences, and the city’s Web site and to come up with a business plan that would require no capital expenditure.

The result is a public-private agreement. In April, the city selected a systems provider to manage and deploy in five phases a Wi-Fi mesh network across 40 square miles to be completed by early next year.

Italian Association of Small Towns

Three quarters of 8,000 municipalities in Italy have less than 5,000 residents. The low population density in rural areas and the challenging terrain make it physically and financially difficult to provide broadband connectivity to these towns.

To bridge the digital divide, the Italian Association of Small Towns has begun providing incentives to the private sector to bring wireless alternatives to its associated villages across the country.

In one dramatic example, the town of Chamois high in the Italian Alps now has broadband Internet access enabling voice-over IP, video surveillance, and a Web cam to promote tourism. Recent permissions from the Italian government have opened the way for inclusion of 10 million more rural residents

Medford, Oregon

Medford, Oregon, deployed a mesh network across 21 square miles primarily to replace its public-safety department’s CDPD network. Police wanted transmission of video and remote access to databases. Firefighters wanted mapping and floor plans to find the best route to a call, and to get remote access to hazardous material data.

But when project leaders evaluated the potential benefit to all city departments, what they discovered surprised them. Public works crews, code enforcement officers, and building inspectors would also benefit.

The network would enable locates and work-order access in the field, saving 20 crews about an hour a day each or $64 an hour, resulting in a $333,000 annual savings. By analyzing all the needs within its mobile workforce, Medford has been able to deliver a more robust ROI for itself and community it serves.

Lenexa, Kansas

The City of Lenexa, Kansas, has deployed a metro-area mobile and fixed-wireless broadband network to connect government buildings, municipal vehicles, traffic signals, and video cameras. Funding was made available through Lenexa’s involvement in Operation Greenlight, a 19-city, multi-agency collaborative effort in greater Kansas City to reduce pollution and create savings through improved traffic flow.

Lenexa’s IT professionals have distinguished themselves in their determination to break down barriers among agencies with wireless technology. The result is a shared platform for everything from traffic management to emergency response and new citizen services, increasing the efficiency of local-government operations, reducing monthly telecommunications costs, and improving the quality of life for area residents.

Chaska, Minnesota

In the summer and fall of 2004, a small town southwest of Minneapolis began making some big headlines. The can-do community of Chaska, Minnesota, had decided to take its broadband destiny into its own hands.

In April that year, the city council approved the rollout of a 200-node Wi-Fi mesh network on streetlights and other properties to provide low-cost connectivity to residents. Service to 7,500 households across 15 square miles would overlay existing commercial cable and DSL service and be billed the same way as gas and electricity.

Residents had been paying $40 to $60 per month for broadband, but by the following November, Chaska.net was charging $15.99. Today, it serves 2,300 households.

THE JURY

The W2i Wireless Communities Best Practices Awards Jury convened at the Georgia Institute of Technology on September to select the finalists and award winners from more than 40 nominations.

Dr. Costis Toregas, Jury Chair, is President Emeritus, Public Technology, Inc.; and Chair, National Academy of Public Administration standing panel on Social Equity in Governance said: “Best Practice award winners are always difficult to pick, but not this group! They stood head and shoulders above their competition, and show both government and industry how to change the status quo and bring the new, fertile and exciting technology of wireless broadband to everyone: citizens, businesses, visitors and everyone irrespective of means. What a great accomplishment!”

Abe Kani, Juror, is Chief Information Officer, City of Atlanta said: “It was encouraging to see how so many communities all over the globe have embraced the potential value offered by the wireless initiative efforts led by their local governments. Our evaluation task was not easy, but it was important for me to focus on those communities which have not only been interested in the initiative but rather have pursued its implementation, aggressively. I hope this basis for awarding communities encourages more communities to become implementers and not just to remain as observers.”

Axel Leblois, Juror, is Executive Director, CIFAL Atlanta; and Special Senior Fellow of UNITAR said: “At first, the task of sorting out so many interesting case studies from nominees appeared a bit challenging. However, the format adopted to capture the essential features of each case study and the able chairmanship of Costis made the whole exercise a really captivating and enjoyable experience. The jury process ran really very well. Kudos to Noopur's excellent organization skills!”

Alex (Sandy) Pentland, Juror, is Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT said: “It is really exciting to see so many great projects going on all around the world. I think it brings home that we are participating in a revolution in communications that will remake the face of society. My congratulations to all the contestants, and to Noopur as well!”

Scott Shamp, Juror, is Director, New Media Institute, Univ. Georgia said: “Diversity powers all ecosystems. The W2i Best Practices Awards highlight the incredible diversity to be found in wireless initiatives. During the judging I was amazed at the wide range of different types of wireless implementations from all over the world. I have never felt more optimistic about wireless's ability to positively impact people's lives.”

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