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MEMORANDUM To: City Council City Manager Department Heads From: Kim Moore - Sykes, Assistant City Manager N41,-,7 Date: June 2, 2005 Subject: Wireless Internet The Chaska Story. Research of the Wireless Internet possibilities for the City of St. Anthony is listed as an item for Staff research and resulted in part from Council - Staff discussions from the goal setting retreat that the City held in January 2005. There has been a lot of media coverage about the City of Chaska's efforts to install a community-owned wireless Internet system and Council asked staff to research this emerging technology and assess its suitability for the City. I contacted Bradley Mayer, the IT Manager for the City of Chaska, and he provided me with information that detailed how the City of Chaska became a service provider of wireless Internet for their community. Mr. Mayer reported that because the City was situated too far from their cable provider's system, the only Internet service that their community could access was through DSL. This access proved to be slow and difficult to use, especially for the businesses community. Mr. Mayer said because of the expense of installing the needed infrastructure, no private contractor was interested in installing the cable to bring Broadband to Chaska. It was at this point five years ago that Chaska decided to take matters into their own hands. The City Council understood that if they wanted to continue with economic development and grow their 16 square -mile city, they would need to provide Internet service that is affordable, accessible and speedy. They found through their research that with the advancements made in technology they could provide wireless Internet services to their residents that is cheaper and just as fast if not faster than the DSL services some residents were currently receiving. At the NSCC Planning Retreat that I attended on February 26th, Mr. Mayer and a representative from TROPOS Networks presented the Chaska project, talking about the technology they used, how it was deployed and the results to date. TROPOS installed what they call a "mesh system', which is a series of antennas that are strategically located to provide the best and most redundant coverage. This and most wireless systems currently operate on an unlicensed wireless spectrum which is prone to some interference and security issues, but as the TROPOS representative explained, it is the best technology currently available and by employing this mesh system, they can minimize the interference and security issues. The utilization of redundancy also allows the system to automatically reconfigure itself to provide continuous coverage should a portion of the system go down. The system would continue to operate in this manner until repairs could be completed. Member of the Cable Commission. One of the first questions that came to mind was whether or not Chaska belonged to a cable commission or cable services provider group, similar to St. Anthony's membership in North Suburban Cable. I was interested to find out if they had a HAMemos \2005 \Wire1ess Internet 05032005.doc rev.