Give us your THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS - HOPES AND DREAMS FOR A WIRELESS VALLEY
Current topic: CITY OF BROWNSVILLE BUNGLING
BROADBAND STIMULUS MONEY UP FOR GRABS!
DO YOU WANT PUBLIC WiFi in your Valley?
Help us by posting your comments on our blog. Let your city officials know you expect your 3G and 4G phones and mobile applications to work at warp-speed.
The Rio Grande Valley Wireless Initiative is a joint effort
by industry, academia and government, building a
research initiative to lay the foundations for the long-term future of
All-Rio Grande Valley wireless communications. This initiative is
charged with a set of Integrated Projects: The overall objective of is
to define fixed and mobile systems and functions that provide member
cities with an excellent user experience while minimizing the financial
investment required.
The Rio Grande Valley Wireless Initiative's driving force is user centricity: RGV wireless communications systems will have to provide all cities with immediate added value.
As the Rio Grande Valley matures in Wireless technology, consensus-building amongst our many towns will become increasingly difficult. Rio Grande Valley Wireless Initiative
was formed to develop a ubiquitous network plan, prior to any
competitive environment.
"Imagine, if you will, how collaborative research can create the perfect network allowing, say, a police car or an emergency vehicle from Brownsville, driving over to McAllen and, although now on the McAllen grid, be operating back on its Brownsville systems as if it had never left. Conversely, a McAllen vehicle could be in Harlingen or Edinburg or Mission or Pharr and still be "up" on its home systems in McAllen. Try doing that after all the cities have built diverse systems which won't communicate," says Bobby Vassallo, of Valley Wireless.
Another fact is that on a homogenous system as described above, Emergency Medical Services become immediately achieveable. If a major storm blows in off the Gulf, and a firetruck or ambulance is needed in another jurisdiction, that vehicle will still enjoy full communications capabilities from GPS to Streaming Video to Voice. Try that anywhere else. Impossible.
All agree that cities should have their own private networks, but that doesn't mean these cities can't share bandwidth with sister-cities in the valley, to further enhance public safety. And, much has been learned from the mistakes of other cities, wasting huge sums of money on systems that would never work.
With FEMA and Homeland Security moneys readily available for access to systems built correctly, it only makes sense for each of the Rio Grande Valley Wireless Initiative member cities to receive some or total repayment for construction of this network. Please continue onto the following pages, realizing the importance of cooperation amongst Valley cities now. The Rio Grande Valley Wireless Initiative was formed because "Lives depend on it."
