The new Municipal Wireless Snapshot is our site of the day

The new Municipal Wireless Snapshot report provides guidelines for doing effective technology due diligence. There are some serious issues presented here that average residents and businesses need to know about, as well as local governments. Otherwise, there are going to be some disappointed cities when their networks go live.

This report concludes that municipal networks' success depends heavily on the quality of technology due diligence conducted by cities and counties. However, it involves more than analyzing technology and many constituent groups need to be engaged in the process.

There's a lot of good advice and insights in this report that need to be shared. The number of governments doing effective due diligence is offset by many that are doing a poor job. Even when the networks aren't run by local government, this is bad news for the community.

Here are just a few comments to give you a hint of what some cities believe is important:

Dave Pokorney (Chaska, MN): We ve had a lot of calls from other cities asking for advice and many of them seem like they re already jumping to WiFi as the technology solution. To me, they re starting at the wrong point.

John Greely (Lompoc, CA) : Before you can do appropriate due diligence, you have to thoroughly assess the needs of your municipality.

Varinia Robinson (Philadelphia, PA): Since our primary focus of the network was for community use, we started out thinking mesh and WiMAX. But in a year the landscape changed so much we looked at different technologies as well

Steve Reneker (Riverside, CA): We ve had a pilot covering 28 blocks in place for three years that helped us identify our needs, and also show that there is [end user] uptake and an increase in usage that comes with time.

Greg Meffert (New Orleans, LA): I think a test of your due diligence is determining if you can get a dedicated small part of the network to function independently if the mainstream providers and even the power fail.

James Hettrick (Loma Linda, CA): I get the feeling when I talk to people that many don t understand the seriousness of doing good due diligence. They are so hands-off I m shocked.

This free report will be distributed at the MuniWireless conference in Santa Clara, and is available now online.