BLOOMINGTON -- Twin City officials would like to see more people wired. Make that wireless. The communities want to be among a growing number of cities offering residents the option of bringing their laptops to a downtown park bench or sidewalk cafe and connecting — for free — to the Internet.
Wi-Fi, short for wireless fidelity, allows computer users with the right components to connect to the Internet without a cable or phone line. The technology allows them to log on from any “hot spot” — anyplace Wi-Fi is available and where public access is offered.
Some businesses, primarily coffee shops, already offer Wi-Fi for free or for a small fee as a way to lure customers.
But the service and the convenience is a concept cities are jumping on in growing numbers as a way to attract people and businesses to their central business districts.
“Technology is a 21st-century highway and we need to consider it a new type of infrastructure,” said Bloomington Alderman Mike Matejka. “We should consider a Wi-Fi network just like we consider a road project or a project to install water and sewer lines.”
Matejka is among the city’s aldermen who are pushing to see Bloomington’s downtown turned into a free Internet hot spot.
A project to build a Wi-Fi network in uptown Normal already is in the works, with about $100,000 in the town’s budget for the coming fiscal year set aside to get it started.
Bloomington is not as far along, but city staff members are pulling together ideas for how to offer Wi-Fi downtown, with a report to the council expected this spring. So far, no city money has been budgeted to the project.
Last week, the city received a proposal that includes a Wi-Fi network from TDSI, a Chicago-area company the city hired to look at ways to install security cameras downtown, said Bloomington City Manager Tom Hamilton.
“Providing free Wi-Fi could be an offshoot of the security system,” Hamilton said. “But we have to see where the council wants to go with this project.”
After attending a conference last week in Peoria for city managers, Hamilton said Wi-Fi networks and city-offered hot spots were the featured topics of discussion.
“It’s the new No. 1 priority for a lot of communities in the state,” he said.
Urbana Wi-Fi well-received
Last summer, Urbana went online, offering free connections from its downtown. Urbana’s Wi-Fi system is a cooperative effort between the city and a not-for-profit company called CU-Win.
Ross Musselman, project coordinator with CU-Win, said fine tuning is continuing, including adding more security to allow users to safely send information such as credit card numbers through the system. But the service already is being well received — and not just in coffee shops, he said.
Scott Peters, owner of Dyno-Tune, an Urbana automobile repair garage, uses the Wi-Fi connection to help run his business.
Previously, Peters used a dial-up connection, but quickly found that pulling up schematic drawings for vehicles was a time-consuming process. He was looking for something faster. Peters had to purchase a $750 component called a node to connect to the city’s Wi-Fi system because his business is just a few blocks off of downtown.
Peters can recoup the cost of the node in about a year because he doesn’t have a $50 monthly bill from the local cable company.
“Having the Wi-Fi is not a real selling point for my customers,” Peters said. “But I’m happy with it. The higher speed available on this network is so much faster than dial-up and more convenient.”
The benefits of offering a free Wi-Fi network go beyond attracting people to a central business district and providing a community service. It also can be a terrific marketing tool for a city, said Normal City Manager Mark Peterson.
“It’s a benefit to be able offer that kind of technology and show businesses we are a connected community,” Peterson said.
Downtown then townwide?
The first phase of Normal’s Wi-Fi plan is targeted for uptown, but Peterson said officials could be looking at offering a Wi-Fi network for the whole town and possibly cooperating with Bloomington so the entire Twin Cities could be a hot spot. Philadelphia is the first major city to offer a Wi-Fi network that covers the whole city. St. Cloud, Fla., also offers a citywide Wi-Fi network.
Musselman said there are a growing number of studies that show how municipal-run Wi-Fi networks benefit the community.
“The studies show a pretty clear trend that if you are a municipality with your own network, jobs increase,” Musselman said.
Peterson said a townwide network also could help Normal by increasing staff efficiencies that go along with being connected.
“Having this kind of connectivity can keep and make our mobile work force better able to do their jobs,” Peterson. “We aren’t living in the Dark Ages. They do have computers, but what they can do now is just the tip of the iceberg for what is possible.”
In the case of Bloomington and Normal, whether the Wi-Fi network would be owned and operated solely by the municipalities or in conjunction with a communications company hasn’t been determined.
Hamilton thinks Bloomington’s system would be city-operated, and offered at a middle-of-the-road access speed so it’s a good, reliable service for the public, but doesn’t compete with the faster services offered by local companies.
M.K. Guetersloh
mkguetersloh@pantagraph.com
