I was surprised to see Verizon outside my house, last week. They were installing fiber for FIOS service. I knew some suburbs were getting wired. But I didn't expect we would get wired for approximately another year. Whats more, I was told Syracuse is mostly wired up, already.
Thinking about how Verizon FIOS might affect the business and political landscape for a municipal broadband network, I posed myself the following questions:
By leveraging existing investments in IT infrastructure made by the City of Syracuse School District, the Syracuse Police Department has been able to gain wireless access to its own network from the field without having to install a costly, redundant infrastructure. The IBM website has a nice case study article on the project. This is a good example of consolidation that municipal broadband could provide.
We have created a rationale and proposal document describing the Syracuse Municipal Broadband Initiative in greater detail. You will find the HTML and PDF versions here. This will probably be a "living" document, updated over time as the project evolves.
We have created a one page document describing the Syracuse Municipal Broadband Initiative. You will find the HTML and PDF versions here.
Our local telecommunications (TV, Internet, phone) infrastructure is crucial to the social, economic, and democratic health of our community. It is equal in importance to our public roads, schools, and utility services. As technology progresses, and the diversity of services grow, we will become evermore connected, reliant, and dependent on our communications network. We are foolish if we as a community do not take action to secure public control of our communications network.
Welcome to the new website of the Syracuse Municipal Broadband Initiative.There is still a lot to do on the technical side. And there isn't much content, yet, but it will grow over time. We are writing and gathering documents and resource links in order to provide visitors a complete resource of information on municipal broadband in general, and on the Syracuse initiative in particular...
