Oram, Andy (2007). MuniWireless conference: city politicians need to understand the lay of the LAN. O’Reilly Emerging Telephony, June 4, 2007.
http://www.oreillynet.com/etel/blog/2007/06/muniwireless_conference_city... This short article is a response based on the author’s experiences at the Muniwireless New England Conference. The article describes a layered way of thinking about municipal broadband networks: see the “Two triple tiers” section. There is a growing consensus in municipal networking that wireless by itself is not enough- “wireless is one step and one component of a strategy that includes a substantial fiber network.” Useful networks can be thought of as having three tiers. In the first tier a fiber ring brings extremely high bandwidth within a few thousand feet of most locations and goes directly to major buildings such as City Hall, hospitals, and schools. A second tier involves WiMAX, and in a third tier, the final hundred feet of connectivity are provided by Wi-Fi. This model is common in many rural areas of Europe, particularly in areas that were left behind by earlier waves of telecom development, such as Romania and Bulgaria. Building a network on such a model can be a wise long-term investment, and is also a way to bring connectivity to a community faster than if fiber were built to reach every location.