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Citywide Wi-Fi for Charleston
Plans underway for South Carolina city
The city of Charleston, South Carolina has plans underway to select a third-party provider for free Wi-Fi access in the city, with the initial pilot phase of the project expected to begin in peninsular Charleston. According to the bid document, Muniwireless.com notes that the city will not be providing any subsidy but may provide other 'in kind' support, it also mentions that the provider will be required to make a minimum of at least 250 Kbps bandwidth available to users. The Request for Proposals (RPF) deadline for this project was June 28th, a copy of the bid document can be viewed here (.pdf).
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FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

4 edits

FFH5

Premium Member

Minimum 250kbps is a joke

After reading the article, only requiring a minimum 250kbps bandwidth requirement is a joke, right?

Here is the wording from the bid document:
Back-end Support Including Internet Service. The City requires that the WiFi
system provide Internet connectivity at a minimum of 250 kilobits for all users.

Do they mean upstream?, downstream? combined? Who wrote this bid - Mickey Mouse? Al Gore?

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Optimized
MVM,
join:2001-05-03
Ringwood, NJ

1 edit

Optimized

MVM,

Re: Minimum 250kbps is a joke

said by FFH5:

Do they mean upstream?, downstream? combined? Who wrote this bid - Mickey Mouse? Al Gore?
... even Mickey has more bandwidth than that.

With all kidding aside ... I would say as long as they go with a good provider, users should see decent connection rates via 802.11g or 802.11b

It looks like they built alot of CYA into the RFP.

mastervirus
Premium Member
join:2004-07-05
North Charleston, SC

mastervirus

Premium Member

Funny Thing

Is that I haven't even heard of this and i live in Charleston. This is a joke I mean every where here in Charleston is almost WIFi anyways except for section 8 housing.
switchman
join:1999-11-06
ARRIS SB6183
(Software) OPNsense

switchman

Member

FREE????

I don't know where the any one saw "Free" in the RFP. In the Scope of Work section, the following is specifically stated.

"Provide a detailed Fee Schedule for potential users and/or services being proposed"

In reference to the CYA comment posted earlier, these are normal. For a government tender, they are actually quite mild. I respond to RFx's all the time and can definitely state that I have seen a lot worse. This tender is only 13 pages of which about 1.25 pages actually define the scope of work.

jazzy_
join:2004-01-27
Charleston, SC

4 edits

jazzy_

Member

Re: FREE????

The City of Charleston, South Carolina (City) is soliciting proposals for the third party installation, maintenance and provision of a non-exclusive free Internet service for a Wireless Fidelity System (WiFi).

The proposed WiFi system will provide free wireless Internet access via IEEE 802.11g and 802.11b (WiFi) standard-based technologies to the areas listed below.


This should be pretty nice, the Charleston peninsula(first phase) is already covered pretty well but there are some blank spots here and there. Charleston was ranked 32nd most unwired area in the nation by Intel.

I'm not sure why they chose such a low speed minimum but that would not be competitive with already free offerings in certain parts of the city.

nswint
Who Built The Ark?
Premium Member
join:2001-11-17
Union City, GA

nswint

Premium Member

Re: FREE????

I see that you're in Goose Creek. I spent many summers of my youth there. I loved fishing over there. Sounds like a good plan for Charleston.