How (in Theory) to Build A Successful Muni WiFi Hot Zone

Identify a key location where people congregate, ideally a commercial district near a college or university, with some nearby arts and cultural institutions.

Do a site survey. Determine the equipment and costs, where people will let you mount antennas, where you could bring in ‘backhaul’ — DSLs, T1s, Fixed Wireless, etc.

Work with the local non-profits — Business Improvement Districts, Community Boards — to determine what wireless applications, services and experiences would prove useful for the area in question. Local advertisement, both in the sense of creating awareness of the network, and creating advertising opportunities for local entities, is crucial.

Cost out the development of the local portal; use a phased approach. The portal and its associated features should go incrementally. What goes up first? What is stage two or three? At each stage, you will learn what is working for your users and what isn’t.

What other hardware based add-ons would people / local businesses find useful or compelling? Interactive flat screens? Kiosks? What devices — handsets, tablets, game consoles, VOIP phones, non-browser based devices — should the network actively support and promote?

Produce an ROI analysis: What is the demographic you wish to draw? What are the assumptions for usership? What will each user bring per day economically? If a WiFi Hot Zone covering ten blocks costs $100K to first build and maintain Year One, but $20K for each Year Two, and Year Three, but we can project an average of 300 sessions a day over those three years, is it worth 43 cents per session to bring people to this Hot Zone to work, dine, shop? How much revenue could be derived from local advertising to around 100,000 people a year?

Identify sources of funding — sponsorships, partnerships, grants, advertising, e-commerce. Depending on the place you want to build the network, it’s target audience and aims, the funding sources will be different.

Get the timing right. This model will work only when there are enough locals who have WiFi enabled devices. You need critical mass. We are getting closer…