12/19/2005 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Regular Council Meeting 12/ 19/05 Page 5 that we do a joint venture where we would provide space on our cellular tower over by the fire station. In exchange, they would provide the hardware canopy that would go up on to the cellular tower and then we would bring in OneCleveland which only goes through non- profit and governmental agencies. We would drop off a link at Panzica and bring it then to the fire station and run it up to the tower to the canopy. The canopy would then do two things. First, it would enable the Wi-Fi hotspot over a pretty good sized area, an estimate of about a mile radius. Mr. Brett is reviewing more information on this. If we opt to go Wi- Max, we could probably extend that. We could probably have a mile radius of one gigabyte Wi-Fi wireless internet. Mr. Buckholtz asked if it was a mile radius from the center of Mayfield Village. Mr. Brett indicated that he was correct. Mr. Buckholtz asked if that would include the school. Mr. Brett indicated that the selling point for the interest that Panzica has is that they can use that internet connection to develop what is called Wi-Max which is different from Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi is a loose thing. You send it out. People pick it up free of charge, similar to Yours Truly which has a little router in the back that probably has a cable internet drop. You open up your laptop. As long as it is equipped with the proper card, it will pick up the wireless. You do whatever you want from your ISP and access the internet. Panzica Investments would like to use the same tower providing what is called Wi-Max which is not so loose. It allows for encryption of the wireless feed through specific modems that they would then sell to businesses and they would sell the Wi-Max services to the businesses at a cost of about half of what it would cost somewhere else. Mr. Buckholtz asked if it was the same as in hotels that do not offer for free. You would need asign-in code and then would pay for it with this specific log-on code. Mr. Brett replied that this is a much more sophisticated signal and is much different. It has the ability to encrypt it to a degree where people feel secure in having their information go out over the wireless. The information sent to Council on Wi-Max indicates that it has a lot of potential. Essentially what is developed here is that there are more capabilities than what we were looking at in Apri12004. We have a partner that is coming in willing to share the cost. They are not doing this out of charity, they are doing it out of their own economic self-interest, but their economic self-interest also plays into our economic self interest. The primary benefit of this program is to provide that Wi-Max accessibility to businesses that are located on Beta Drive. Mr. Brett does not know what the availiability of Wi-Max is now currently in Cleveland, but we would probably be one of the few places where you could get it right now. Reading the articles, Wi-Max is something that is three years down the line for laptops. It is being used as a business venture in some places. One of the companies that were going to support it was Intel who will start equipping their centrinos with the ability to pick up Wi- Max. The basic thing is Wi-Max. Aside benefit will be the WiFi hotspot that will extend for quite a bit of ways. The other benefit is this will be the foothold. From there, you can start to really extend this. Looking at the Wi-Max, this looks like some exciting stuff, technically speaking, that holds a large amount of potential. With regard to the gigabyte, Mr. Marquardt referred to information which indicated that the best WiFi is 54 megabytes per second. Mr. Marquardt asked if that limits speed.