Chapel Hill Technology Advisory Committee

[Brian Russell <brussell AT metalab.unc.edu>]

RE: Cost of Muni WiFi per square mile

http://tinyurl.com/m69fs
(Copied bellow for convenience)

The bottom line from this article:
"Given these estimates, in a worst-case scenario a company, neighborhood, 
or municipality will save 25% using open-source, open-architecture systems 
like CUWiN. And, obviously, the cost-savings just go up from there."

-Brian

Crunching Numbers: CUWiN vs. Tropos -- Costs to Wireless 1-square Mile.

I recently read on WiFiNetNews that Tropos Networks has announced it would 
cost $68,000 for the equipment necessary to network one square mile. And a 
lot of folks have been asking me how much it would cost to network a 
square mile using a CUWiN-based system. I recently gave a presentation at 
Open Space Austin on the costs for community networks which gave me a 
reason to pull together some rough estimates.

So here's some numbers for a CUWiN-based system (along with the 
information that went into coming up with these estimates). I would 
strongly encourage Tropos to do likewise and let consumers know how they 
came up with their own cost estimates.

1 square mile = 27,878,400 square feet.

CUWiN's existing network has links as short as about 100 meters, and as 
long as 400 meters (or more). So I've broken down the network cost 
estimates into a "low-", "medium-", and "high-cost" breakdowns to give an 
honest assessment of the potential spread for different geographies.
Node Coverage Radius 	Square Feet Covered 	Nodes Needed 	Total 
Cost*
1,000 feet      3,140,000       9       $3150
500 feet        785,000         36      $12600
250 feet        196,250         142     $49700

*Notes: Current costs for the equipment CUWiN uses are $350/node. Radii 
are based on connectivity distances between nodes (i.e., coverage area may 
be larger, but these are the effective distances between two nodes in the 
coverage are).

Given these estimates, in a worst-case scenario a company, neighborhood, 
or municipality will save 25% using open-source, open-architecture systems 
like CUWiN. And, obviously, the cost-savings just go up from there.


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