South Dakota: One Big Hotspot

South Dakota, Wireless Hotspot: Feasibility of Statewide WiMAX-Enabled Municipal Internet Built on the K-12 Network

A paper submitted 2009.04.13
for INFS 750 Networks (etc.)
By Cory Allen Heidelberger

ABSTRACT

Municipal wireless Internet offers potential economic and cultural benefits to all communities. However, the capital (physical and human) required to deploy and manage such networks appears to set a natural lower bound on the size of community that can successfully sustain such a system. Rural communities in South Dakota, most with populations under 10,000, likely fall below that threshold. Therefore, this paper proposes a model for a statewide cooperative network of municipal wireless Internet services in South Dakota, built on the existing infrastructure that provides Internet access to public schools across the state.

 

Municipal Wireless Networks — opening articles

I’m putting together a paper on municipal wireless networks (Muni Wi-fi) for INFS 750. Here’s the first small batch of articles I tracked down for the annotated bibliograpjy assignment:

 

INFS 750: Semester Project Topics

[submitted via D2L to Dr. Moran, 2009.01.22]

So tell me if this will be a sufficiently meaty and relevant topic for class: I’d like to investigate municipal/community wireless networks. Aberdeen initiated a program last year to make their downtown one big public-access hotspot; it might be interesting to e-mail them (or even take a roadtrip!) to learn about their network and their experience with it. I could also add some background on the projects in San Francisco and Philadelphia, though I’d love to keep my focus on the feasiblity and advantages/disadvantages of such programs for rural South Dakota communities.

Municipal Wireless is my first choice, but if that doesn’t fulfill the requirements for the assignment, I do have a couple back-ups (rural broadband, impact of infrastructure stimulus; replacement of in-house networks with virtual/WiMAX). Let me know what works! Thanks!