Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Houston Gets a Blanket of 4G Coverage

Everything is bigger in Texas, and the city of Houston is no exception. Earlier this week, Houston announced plans to cover most of the city with a 4G wireless broadband signal, or WiMax network, that will reach over 90% of residents and businesses and provide download speeds up to 80 Mbps. But, there's something interesting about how this decision came about. It was not, as you might suspect, in an unquenchable passion for high speed internet among consumer and business subscribers.

Economic development boards everywhere have had untold numbers of discussions over the question: what will bring more businesses here. On the table for the past decade or more has been broadband infrastructure, which could mean anything from copper wire to ISDN. But recently, talk of using WiFi blankets across a city's commercial districts have become more and more popular, and even tried in several scenarios.

So, what brings Houston to this conclusion? Simple. Internal process. The municipality itself needed the network. Residents and businesses were an afterthought. Using the ubiquitous wireless signal, the city will be able to monitor countless gas meters, parking meters, water meters, and even remotely control traffic lights. Reducing the need to drive around the city to perform routine checks and meter-reads will save the city millions.

So, what about the nearly 300,000 residents who do not have any broadband service to their door? The announcement mentions that they'll have "free Internet service from excess bandwidth." Excess bandwidth? The scraps. The second thought. Could it be that the "internet for everyone" mission is accomplished by plain old necessity, not altruism? It appears that way.

What would happen if more cities and states could derive benefit from wireless broadband? What if cell towers along highways and interstates served the government's utility more than they currently imagine? How much could your home town save if they could monitor meters from a control room instead of drivers all over the city?

Labels: "Internet infrastructure", 4G, Broadband, Fixed Wireless Broadband, Free Wifi, wimax