AUCKLAND (WiMAX Day). The city of Hamilton in New Zealand has announced that it will work with Woosh Wireless to deploy the first mobile municipal WiMAX network in New Zealand.

According to Kevin Wiley, CEO of Woosh, it is planned that the entire city of Hamilton will have WiMAX coverage by early 2008.

Michael Redman, the mayor of Hamilton, stated that “the key to the successful implementation of this exciting initiative is that Woosh is committed to working together collaboratively and consulting closely with the community on the roll out of infrastructure required to support the service.”

Public-Private Collaboration
As more municipal WiMAX projects are unveiled around the world, the most successful model for deployment is similar to what Woosh is implementing in Hamilton, where a city or local government collaborates with companies that own and operate existing networks. Such companies have the expertise to manage networks, and communities can save substantial development costs.

Such public-private partnerships (PPP) are underway in many parts of the world. Aircel is working closely with several local governments in India to deploy city-wide WiMAX services. Stokab in Sweden was created as a public-private initiative for “unwired Stockholm.”

Nortel, one the largest wireless and WiMAX equipment vendors, has launched hundreds of municipal wireless networks around the world. In most cases when Nortel responds to an RFP, they recommend that the local authority form a partnership with an experienced network operator to run the services. Nortel reasons that such partnerships help municipalities to offset the cost and risk of a deployment, but also that a network operator will have experience in building an operating a network, which is invaluable.

Also in America, the town of Manchester in Connecticut issued an RFP last month seeking proposals to deploy a WiMAX network that would support video surveillance in the town with a population of 55,000. The RFP, directed at independent network operators, also called for the eventual integration of the WiMAX network with the town’s existing Wi-Fi and fibre networks, and which could be offered to the community on a subsidised subscription basis.

However, many municipal wireless projects do not involve commercial partners who own and operate networks, and in fact, many municipal projects compete directly with commercial network operators when services are offered to the community for free.

The American city of Winston-Salem in North Carolina last week announced that they will construct a municipal WiMAX network, and basic Internet access will be offered free. Companies such as Clearwire that have already built and are operating commercial WiMAX networks in the Winston-Salem area will no doubt be affected by the competition of “free” Internet access.

A Growing Market
Government efforts for education and public safety are at the heart of most municipal WiMAX deployments. WiMAX is also seen as a platform for enabling improved traffic management and transport systems, e-government and even crime prevention.

According to the market research firm Yankee Group, there are an estimated 300 municipal wireless projects afoot in the US alone, and Yankee estimate that these projects will account for some US$ 400 million in spending next year.

While any debate over the merits of fully public WiMAX or public-private deployments is valid today, some analysts see an opportunity for private operators in the future to pick-up mature WiMAX networks that were deployed by municipalities but which become to unruly to manage. An analyst at Goldman Sachs believes that many of these public initiatives will create a lucrative market in the future, similar to other public utilities, when they are eventually sold off to private operators.