Wireless Technologies and Business Models for Municipal Wireless Networks

Municipal wireless network is a recently established infrastructure of city-based wireless network, which provides mainly outdoor broadband wireless access to Internet for public usages. The municipal network is usually regarded as a public-utility service, which not only delivers well connected broadband services in the city at an affordable price but also promotes society interaction and brings sustainable development to support municipalities. Therefore, the concept is attracting more and more attention from city authorities both in developed and developing countries. Graph 1 shows the Internet usage worldwide in 2008 (Stats, 2008). It can be seen that there is a distinctive penetration rate between developed and developing regions.