WEBWIRE – Thursday, March 10, 2011
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Polish City Builds a Network Platform to Deliver New and Enhanced Services to Residents and Visitors
ELBLAG, Poland – – Cisco today announced that the city of Elblag has chosen the Cisco® Borderless Network solution to build a municipal broadband network. Elblag is a port city in northern Poland with more than 120,000 inhabitants and access to the Baltic Sea.
A next-generation multiservice Internet Protocol (IP) network with 120 kilometers (75 miles) of optical fiber will connect local government offices, schools, nurseries, libraries and other municipal institutions. Elblag’s citizens and visitors will have access to eight Wi-Fi outdoor hot spots, as well as 20 public Internet access points, free of charge. The municipal network will also be connected to the regional broadband network of eastern Poland.
Key Facts / Highlights:
- Based on the new infrastructure, users will be able to access information and resources via multiple access methods — both wired and wireless — as well as various services, including data, voice and video, enabled by the network.
- The core of the infrastructure implemented in Elblag is based on Cisco 7600 Series Routers with Ethernet Services Plus (ES+) line cards, providing an effective transport of differentiated services and highly secure peering with other service providers.
- Access is provided by Cisco ME 3400E switches, whilst the wireless network is based on Cisco Aironet® 1520 Series outdoor access points. There is also a dedicated data center segment based on Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Series Switches equipped with application acceleration and security services modules.
- The new infrastructure is opening up new ways to manage and deliver services to local inhabitants as well as to visitors and public sector workers. It will help improve communication between municipal departments located at various parts of the city and provide a base for developing e-services for citizens. There are plans to utilize the network for traffic monitoring, as well as the monitoring of sea levels via telemetry sensors, a key concern for Elblag due to its closeness to the Vistula Lagoon and the Baltic Sea.
- Asseco, a Cisco Gold Certified Partner in Poland, is leading the consortium set up for the project implementation. The project is funded from the European Union’s 2007-2013 Regional Operation Program for the Warmia and Mazury regions.
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The key success factor in this municipal network is the fact that they are serving the needs of anchor institutions in the city first. Citizens will only be able to access the network through Wi-Fi hot-spots and Internet access points throughout the city. I am sure that some citizens will be able to receive a signal in their homes to gain access, but the initial objective is not to serve residential subscribers. Perhaps after realizing the benefits of the network for its citizens, the city of Elblag will look at ways to expand the infrastructure to other homes and businesses. Cisco will leverage this infrastructure as a launching point for growing the network.
A successful municipal project is based on defining the stakeholders and their needs, and keeping the project limited to meeting those needs. Projects get tripped up when the stakeholders are too varied in their needs and the project becomes overly ambitious.
Related articles
- Cisco plans to stay out of the services business (infoworld.com)
- Cisco and T-Mobile Team to Deliver a Wi-Fi Calling Solution with an Enterprise-Class Voice-Ready Wireless LAN (blogs.cisco.com)
