Clearwire Signs First Muni Deal Grand Rapids, Michigan gets citywide wimax The 197,800 person city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, has struck a deal with Clearwire to offer Wimax service over the city's 45 square miles, marking the first time the provider has partnered with a municipality. It should take about 10-15 towers to cover the entire city, according to city officials. Clearwire will reimburse the city for the $100,000 it spent on testing, and the network will not be taxpayer funded. There's some additional detail and relevant quotes from town officials in this press release.
|
  TopmounterSent By Grocery Clerks
join:2001-02-20
Evergreen, CO | Nice to see... Nice to see the city take a pro-business / pro-competition approach instead of funding the project with public money and running it with additional government bureaucrats. | |
|  |  Romney2012Defeat Obama 2012-Chg we can believe inPremium
join:2002-03-03
USA
kudos:4
1 edit | Re: Nice to see... Besides the citywide Wimax, they are also going to have some WiFi hotspots scattered around commercial areas for vistors. They will also provide monthly service at a rate of $9.95 for 5% of the cities residents(that is for the welfare set). Prices for the other 95% aren't set yet. Neither are the available speed plans. Though, in other areas, Clearwire plans are like this:
Clearwire’s Residential Plans typically run from $30-$40/month for 700K-1.5 Mbps --
--
My BLOG
My Web Page | |
|
 en102Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA | same buildout as cellular 10-15 sites would be similar to what would be required for a cellular carrier to deploy in that size of area (i.e. Santa Clarita, CA has ~15 cellular sites to completely cover the city with Cingular). I would have thought that WiMax was supposed to cover large areas with very few sites. 45 square miles is 9 miles x 5 miles. | |
| | | | Re: same buildout as cellular Clearwire has a kiosk set up in the Randolph Mall in Asheboro NC and there is NEVER a soul manning the kiosk. They must not really care if they get any business or not. They could be some competition to Time Warner (great service in this area) and Embarq (mediocre service) but noooooooo......why the hell are they paying rent then?? | |
|
| | No more worries Guess I don't have to worry about slow internet at school anymore or worrying about comcast's rule against traveling modems....just have my clearwire modem sitting in my window instead. Clearwire is going to be a nice thing for the city. Hopefully it will be cheaper then the dsl and cable. I wouldn't mind a 1.5meg wireless link in my dorm in addition to the fiber we are getting next fall. Hurray for GR...now if only other areas in michigan would do this. One bad thing though is that GR already has a WISP called michwave...this is going to hurt them a lot. | |
| | | | Re: No more worries Funny thing is It will take more than 15 towers to do this because the population. Also you have to think of performance and such. Great to see though that MI of the states is getting some wireless. | |
|
| |
|
|
