The city of Groningen is the Netherlands center of education, innovation and technology. The city received the title "best inner-city of the Netherlands in 2006" (Source: statistic yearbook 2006 of the city of Groningen). Today, Groningen, with a population of almost 181,000, 25% of the population are students who attend the University of Groningen (RuG), the Hanzehogeschool (Hanze Polytechnic) and others. The city thrives not only as an education center, but as the main shopping center and agricultural enterprise for the entire region.
Unwired Holdings, designed, deployed and operates the state-of-the-art broadband wireless mesh network for Groningen under the name "Groningen Unwired". Currently in its pilot phase, the project is moving toward the full deployment of a citywide wireless mesh broadband network to serve the entire Groningen Community. The Akkoord of Groningen, the initiator of this project, is a foundation consisting of the Hanze Polytechnic (Hanzehogeschool), University of Groningen (RuG), and the City of Groningen. They partnered with Unwired Holdings, a wireless broadband operator, who deployed and operates the network.
Alcadis, the European distributor of Strix Systems assisted Unwired with the design and deployment of the network. "The network was deployed in less than 10 working days," says Hans van Elsen, sales director at Alcadis. "The intelligence is in the network. Once nodes were up and running, configuring and maintaining the network needed very little effort."
The goals of this phase of the project are to showcase a broad range of IT-applications and solutions available to Groningen's companies, government, public institutions and residents utilizing a citywide wireless broadband network, give an opportunity for stakeholders feedback leading to enhanced success of the greater project and provide qualified answers to technical and application related questions put forth by the Akkoord van Groningen.
The foundation of the network is Strix Access/One OWS products deployed at the city center enabling access by students and faculty -- approximately 40,000 people. The network is meshed in areas central to the Hanze Polytechnic (Hanzehogeschool), University of Groningen, the cities teaching hospital UMCG and the municipality. Students and faculty use their own Wi-Fi equipped laptops, PDAs, dual mode voice over IP phones and other Wi-Fi enabled devices.
"We're testing and implementing a large number of applications that benefit from this high performance wireless network, including those needed by the municipality itself, public safety surveillance projects, mobile work force and much more," said Mitchell Kleinhandler, managing director of Unwired, "We chose Strix Systems because their modular multi-radio Access/One system is the top performing system that provides the best coverage, gives the best return on investment and it's easy to expand for additional coverage and services."
The second phase of the network will provide access to the entire city. Groningen Unwired will also expand its wholesale network services to secondary application providers.
"The network that Groningen Unwired is building is a model for cities around the world that desire competitive services and innovative applications," said Matt Holdrege, director of international strategic sales for Strix Systems.
The next phase of the project will include advanced applications for public safety and municipal projects including, mobile work force, security, parking control and transportation. Future projects may include access to digital counters and municipal information, internal management automation, facilities management, parking meter reading (parkeerwacht), inspection and supervising authorities, VoIP for employees municipal employees, information access for agents on the street concerning incidents, traffic-jam and traffic diversions management, dynamic movement route ring for ambulance, police force and fire department, The Tourist Information Office (VVV), interactive travel routes when exploring the city on foot (wandelroutes) initiated by the city with support for multimedia, INVIS project, University medical centre applications including: live observation, video communication for patients, VoIP telephony for patients, employees and Location based facility services.
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Photo by Fruggo. Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 License
