Over the next few weeks, Bickham and her colleagues will be working on a recommendation to the City Council — originally scheduled for late August — that will incorporate not only the final picture of what the citywide network will look like, but the business model to fund it.
“The needs and the benefits need to balance out, and the benefits need to outweigh the cost of the network,” Bickham said.
It is a cautious process that is a long way from the fervent optimism evident in August, when the City Council and several city administrators initially pressed ahead with seeking bids for a franchise development similar to those proposed in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
“The promises and terms that we thought we’d be getting a year ago have changed dramatically,” Mayor Ara Najarian said.
Originally, the city would have made its infrastructure and fiber-optic network available to a private Internet provider in exchange for citywide wireless service at a drastically reduced fee, or even for free.
But before jumping fully onto the bandwagon, staff proposed the city first undergo a market feasibility study. Since then, Oakland-based municipal Internet consultant Craig Settles has produced a vastly different picture of what a citywide network should look like for Glendale.
Most businesses want regional wireless connectivity, which a Glendale-specific network could not offer. School district officials would also need access to the city’s fiber-optic network and require a means to filter content through the county’s Office of Education servers. The medical community would want both wireless and increased fiber-optic capacity. City officials are still discussing the full scope of their needs.
