Hamilton may soon become one of Ontario's most high-tech municipalities, offering wireless Internet access throughout the city - all a lucky byproduct of the provincial government's plans to conserve energy.
The province's initiative requires standard residential electricity meters to be replaced with new smart meters - meters that offer two-way communication and realtime monitoring and adjustability. Installation will be done progressively and is expected to take until at least 2010. Such a system requires a broad, reliable communication network to link the meters to their home utility companies - and one idea being piloted this summer is to connect the smart meters wirelessly to the Internet. The result could be the creation of a giant citywide WiFi network that would be available to homes and businesses for use across the municipality.
Horizon Utilities Corp., the name for the recently combined Hamilton Hydro and St. Catharines Hydro companies, will be installing 500 WiFi-connected smart meters in the two cities this month as part of a pilot project. The meters should be online and communicating within the next two months.
Max Cananzi, COO of Horizon Utilities, sees tremendous potential for the WiFi network. "We find it very exciting that, through a policy decision of the government, we now have the ability to give high-speed access, cheaply and affordably, to every single home in the province," says Cananzi, who envisions the network as greatly beneficial to civic infrastructure as well as individual home and business users.
"If you think of the other community services, such as police, fire, ambulance, as well as the ubiquitous access to the Internet for everyone at an affordable level ... it really places Hamilton on the map," he says.
Horizon Utilities is working with companion company FibreWired Hamilton to implement the groundbreaking pilot program, which is expected to cost less than $500,000.
FibreWired was created in 1998 to provide communication for the health-care industry, municipal government and emergency sectors.
It currently supports an extensive ethernet and fibreoptic network across the Hamilton area, and has been trying to expand its reach into wireless service delivery in the past 18 months.
"When the smart-metering opportunity came along, we thought combining the needs of Horizon with the process of delivering ubiquitous wireless infrastructure to the city of Hamilton was something we seriously wanted to look at," says Ian Collins, FibreWired's president.
Collins says expanding a WiFi network across Hamilton also would serve to reduce the "digital divide" the municipality currently faces in trying to provide high-speed Internet in areas where infrastructure makes hard-wired networks complicated to install.
Offering wireless Internet services to the entire community would not only be a feather in the two companies' caps, but would allow residents to access high-speed Internet more affordably than they can through current DSL or cable modem offerings.
Though pricing has not yet been made public, FibreWired says it intends to keep costs competitive. The company intends to examine its pricing structure over the course of the pilot phase, during which Internet services will be offered free to anyone within reach of the wireless signal.
Khaled Hassanein, director of the McMaster eBusiness Centre at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, believes Hamilton is ready for such an advancement.
"The trend right now is to have wireless services in pretty much everything," he says. "I think there is a flux of change in this industry, and we're going to see a lot of business models come at us in the next few months and couple of years.
"The promise of anytime-anywhere access could be truly realized by having these WiFi services available," Hassanein says. "The communities that will have the infrastructure to support this kind of wireless business would have an advantage in terms of attracting business to their communities."
Widespread Internet access also would extend the value of Hamilton's government services to the community, as the city continues to try to drive requests for basic municipal information online to maximize resources.
"We do plan on giving free access to e-government services, which means (residents) can go to a prescribed website to find out when garbage day is, sign up for night school, pay parking tickets," Collins says.
Collins foresees FibreWired's implementation of WiFi as going one step beyond traditional wireless networks.
"We're calling it Mobile IP wireless, which means that the technology that we're deploying here allows vehicles to be mobile while actually using the service," Collins says.
Mobile IP wireless would be just part of the cost-savings package for utility companies. Along with no longer needing to deploy human meter readers to individual houses - the meters will relay that information themselves - they will be able to communicate with service technicians. Staff would also be able to retrieve and file information remotely from service vans, making their time on the road more efficient and increasing productivity.
The remote capability also could have benefits for police, fire and medical emergency teams, which could potentially one day retrieve criminal records, location information or medical data while enroute to an emergency call.
Collins says FibreWired hopes it can work with other carriers such as Bell, which may be watching the pilot project. "One of the things we're positioning ourselves for is the notion of roaming agreements with other carriers and saying: 'Look guys, this infrastructure can be made available to extend value to you with an existing client.' "If somebody has a cable modem at home, we're definitely investigating having roaming relationships with those providers so that their clients can still only have one provider and access the network."
Cananzi says he sees a citywide WiFi network as not only a convenient option for individuals, but as a potential boon to the local economy, such as local businesses or business improvement areas providing free Internet access for people doing business in their district.
"What we're hoping will occur with the availability of this infrastructure will be innovation - people using it to draw business into their area. We're hoping that the creative juices will start to flow knowing that the capacity is available," Cananzi says.
"The city needs a shot in the arm and we hope that through infrastructure and tech we can provide the base for that commercial uplift to businesses."
Autor: Liz Clayton
Quelle: Business Edge, 23.06.2005
