Norfolk County Council has seen the number of
connections to its network rise from 3,000 to 30,000 less than a
year into a
two-year trial of a county-wide wireless network.
The £1.35m Norfolk Open Link project aims to evaluate how
community mobile network access could improve economic development
in the region.
The 40Gbyte network, deployed in partnership with network
developer Synetrix, uses 260
Wi-Fi access points in a mesh configuration to provide access
across 20 urban and 36 rural locations in Norfolk. It provides free
wireless internet access for the public sector, businesses and
the general public.
Under European legislation, publicly financed wireless networks
cannot compete with commercial providers, so the data rate is
capped at 1mbps for public sector workers and 256kbps for others.
Users are also required to log in every hour.
Norfolk Open Link project manager Kurt Frary said several
factors had contributed to the network's popularity.
He said ensuring that Wi-Fi antennas blended in with the
existing street furniture minimised objections from locals and
helped ease the network's installation. Also, the topology of the
network was mapped over the local geography to identify where
access points might need planning permission.
"This is where communicating the benefits of the network and its
applications to businesses and public sector organisations helped
secure planning permission. By consulting with these groups as
stakeholders who could use the wireless access service, they were
inclined to help us," said Frary.
The authority for decision making was kept with two main project
leaders. Frary said this helped speed the deployment of the
network, because a larger team would have been slower and less
flexible.
From a technical perspective, access to the network was kept
simple with a straightforward log-in interface and by omitting
features such as filtering, user IDs and passwords.
A key challenge for the council, said Frary, would be sustaining
the network when the trial ends in 2008, and he did not rule out
the possibility of a public/private partnership. The trial was
funded by the East of England Development Agency.
Ian Keene, principal analyst at Gartner Research, said, "A
business model for low-cost or free internet access networks for
all citizens is going to be difficult to sustain over the longer
term, so expectations need to be set accordingly.
"You need to understand all the needs of applications on the
network for the next three to five years to identify all the
internal applications that can achieve efficiency and productivity
benefits."
Norfolk Open Link
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The East of England
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