After months of planning and searching for the perfect partner, the City of Ottawa announced Feb. 7 that it will be offering free wireless Internet at 25 city buildings by July.
After posting a call for proposals last year, the city has decided to partner with IceNet Wireless for a five-year sponsorship deal. An Ottawa-based wireless provider, IceNet focuses on creating free public WiFi networks for communities, a growing need in all cities.
“Internet is becoming more of a necessity than a luxury,” says Anand Srinivasan, technology solutions manager for IceNet. “The change happened about five years ago, when everyone started moving from a general telephone in their home to a smartphone.”
Coun. Tim Tierney, chair of the city’s information and technology sub-committee, said in the Feb. 7 press release that he is “pleased that upgrades to our city’s infrastructure … give Ottawa residents that connectivity they deserve.”
Dan Chenier, general manager of parks, recreation and cultural services, said via email the need for WiFi in city buildings was brought to city hall’s attention by residents. Compared with other Canadian cities, Ottawa has been slow in adopting public WiFi, an issue brought to attention when the National Capital Commission released its plans to provide WiFi in the downtown area in 2011.
While the NCC’s wireless access aimed to help tourists connect with the history of Ottawa, the city’s plan is all about connecting citizens with each other and reinforcing community connections.
“Recreation centres across the city are one of many important components that help shape vibrant communities,” Chenier said about the plan.
The 25 locations slated to receive WiFi—including City Hall, the Jack Purcell Community Centre and the Plant Recreation Centre in Centretown—will have connectivity for visitors in congregation areas as well as screens in the lobbies of the buildings flashing advertisements and programs.
In its request for proposals, the city stipulated that the winning bid must provide WiFi at no cost to the taxpayer, while still providing guaranteed revenue of $315,000 to the city—a revenue stream that advertisements on the screens will provide.
Chenier said the screens and advertisements will be run by IceNet, with some city involvement.
“The city will maintain some advertising space to promote city programs, activities, events and facilities,” Chenier said. Other advertising spaces will be sold to any number of businesses, including restaurants and grocery stores.
While advertisements are a major player in the WiFi deal, Srinivasan says customers using their laptops or smartphones won’t be “bombarded” with advertisements.
“That becomes negative advertisement; I don’t think people like it,” he says. “They want their browsing experience to be as unintrusive as possible.”
Along with the financial and advertising requirements, IceNet will have to meet the city’s need for bilingual programming and services. While there are no extra costs for the taxpayer, the city will be paying for the electricity to run routers as well as the installation of routers and screens.
Srinivasan says the bandwidth for each location will be determined based on need. The city has provided IceNet with numbers indicating which centres have more traffic, and which therefore need more routers and higher bandwidth.
However, Srinivasan warns the program will not be perfect from the start.
“(The program) needs to go through four seasons to find the exact amount and fine-tuning of requirements needed,” he says. “But we will try to provide as much as possible to start with and then we will go above and beyond that. It’s a learning experience”