| William H. Magill on 5 Nov 2004 17:41:02 -0000 |
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On 04 Nov, 2004, at 16:48, George Gallen wrote: Is this the same council chambers room that was flooded out today with the broken sprinklers?
The meeting was held in the Council Chamber. Surprisingly few people attended the meeting and even fewer had anything to say. I guess the main thing gleaned from the event was that the City doesn't have a clue what it is doing. The "Committee" has only two folks on it who are semi-technical. However, all are "stake holders." (I won't even go there.) The "Committee" has hired an outside firm "Civitum" http://www.civitium.com/ to advise them on the technical stuff, in addition to using resources from the City's IT department. Most interesting mention was the fact that the various pilot programs are being paid for by assorted non-city groups. The Friends of Rittenhouse Square are funding the pilot at Rittenhouse square. While she (Dianah Neff, the City's Chief Information Officer) didn't specifically state who was paying what, in response to one question, the cost of $40-60K per square mile was mentioned, along with the comment "that includes the back-haul connection." Since the Rittenhouse square project appears to be the only one at the moment, I assume that was the amount of money that had to come up with. The "Committee" is supposed to present a full business plan to the Mayor and develop an RFP by December (next month)! The consensus of several of us present who have wireless networking backgrounds (there were a number of real commercial ISPs present), developed in side conversations was that not only is $10 million most likely a very low number, but the annual operating cost of $1.5 million is just hilarious. We estimated the operating cost numbers to be off by a significant amount, if the City is really talking about THE ENTIRE CITY. And especially, if, as the panel was describing last evening, they are going to be doing A LOT of end user training and support. ... and that is before depreciation and replacement ... the City is still only talking about 802.11b equipment. It will be interesting to see how this develops. http://www.phila.gov/wireless/index.html http://www.wirelessphiladelphia.net/ From what I can tell, the Love park operation uses "Syndeo" as their ISP. "Syndeo" is apparently "Syndeo Communications Group" not to be confused with Syndeo Corporation. http://www.syndeogroup.com/ http://www.wirelessfidelitymag.com/hotnews/42h25103018.html http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/04/19/ BUGH865P5M1.DTL&type=printable It appears that they (Syndeo and the City) are using Tropos hardware, at least in Love Park http://www.tropos.com/products/index.shtml http://www.tropos.com/company/releases/2004_02_19.shtml www.tropos.com/company/releases/phila_free_internet.pdf NOTE: there will be a non-city presentation on wireless networking at the Free Library on 17 November at 7pm in the main branch on Logan Circle. (Conducted by Media Tank www.mediatank.org)
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