Digital Cities & Community Broadband Summit
3:30 - Wednesday, September 26 Digital Cities Business Model For Mobile WiMAX Networks
Moderators: Roberta Wiggins, Research Fellow, Yankee Group
James Farstad, President, rClient
Panelists: Angela Singhal Whiteford, Director of Municipal Solutions, Nortel
Jim Freeze, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Alliance, BelAir Networks
Bob Friday, Director, Engineering, Cisco Systems

The digital city concept is evolving. Municipalities throughout North America are reconsidering their broadband networking plans, and beginning to incorporate WiMAX. As a licensed resource, WiMAX provides cities with a reliable, future-proof infrastructure designed to integrate with the Wi-Fi ecosystems that many municipalities are implementing today. As the groundswell continues, WiMAX players are adopting a more collaborative approach in an effort to bridge the digital divide between WiFi and fixed broadband to make wireless broadband access ubiquitous throughout urban and rural areas. Critical to digital city deployments, whether WiFi or WiMAX based, is a strong financial model that utilizes a broad portfolio of revenue sources, including anchor tenancy, subscriptions, value added services and advertising. The debate is no longer a question of whether networks should be free or fee paying but how advertising can monetize free usage without detracting from the service and alienating users.

In this session, Yankee Group and key industry leaders will share their perspectives on the complementary development of WiMAX and community broadband networks from both a technology and business perspective. We will address the way WiMAX and Wi-Fi can work together in digital city networks, and explore opportunities for business partnering between WiMAX network operators and local governments with leading industry players to drive successful business models.




4:30 - Wednesday, September 26 The First WiMAX-Based Digital City
Moderator: Roberta Wiggins, Research Fellow, Yankee Group
Panelists: John Storch, VP of Network Development, Clearwire
Charles Riggle, Director, Strategy and Business Development, Motorola
Sally Wesorick, Wireless Project Manager, Grand Rapids Michigan

Sprint and Clearwire are beginning to roll out WiMAX networks by metro and region. Simultaneously, a growing number of cities in North America are incorporating WiMAX into their broadband planning. Transitioning to full WiMAX, however, will take time and requires the collaboration of WiMAX players, including government agencies, vendors and service providers. In this session representatives from the city of Grand Rapids, Clearwire and Motorola will discuss their respective roles in making Grand Rapids the first WiMAX based digital city in North America.


2:30 - Thursday, September 27 Digital Communities as a WiMAX Application Test Bed
Michael Dillon, Vice President, Business Development, Municipal Markets, Firetide Inc.
Rizwan Khaliq, Global Business Executive, Digital Communities, IBM

Broadband networks development and deployment are enabling variety applications for government with the focus on optimizing government services. A substantial portion of the government workforces inherently are mobile, therefore applications such as improving interoperability and collaboration between emergency response teams, instant access to mission critical data , smart video surveillance for public safety and monitoring of critical infrastructure, intelligent transportation systems, mobile case management for social services, filed inspections for building and healthcare stand to benefit significantly form ubiquitous connectivity. The session will explore the focus on Return on Investment of field based applications as well as discussion on specific applications over broadband networks.


3:15 - Thursday, September 27 Showcasing Community Broadband in the Mid-West US
Moderator: James Farstad, rClient, Yankee Group
Panelists: Tony Hylton, Chief Information Officer, Cook County, Illinois
Lynn Willenbring, Chief Information Officer, City of Minneapolis, Minnesota
Mark Ansboury, CTO and COO, One Community - Cleveland

CIOs of today's WiFi based digital cities are reconsidering their broadband networking plans, and beginning to incorporate WiMAX . What are the key drivers behind this transition and who are the vendors that cities are choosing to work with to make it happen? This session showcases several of the community broadband initiatives that are unfolding in the MidWest US and explores their plans to integrate WIMAX into their networks.




4:15 - Thursday, September 27 Role of WIMAX in Municipal System Architectures
Moderator: Roberta Wiggins, Research Fellow, Yankee Group
Panelists: Kurt Lange, Co-founder and Vice President of Systems and Customer Service, US Internet
Mohan Natarajan, CTO, Firetide
Chuck Powers, Member of the Board of Directors, Wi-Fi Alliance, and Director, Standards Strategy, Motorola

Early networks have highlighted the technical challenges of deploying WiFi in an urban/regional environment; vendor solutions are evolving to meet digital city demands. Where will WiMAX play and what is its contribution to the interference, congestion and bandwidth issues facing communities? A panel of leading equipment vendors will debate the optimum role of WiMAX technology in digital city network architectures, and how WiFi and WiMAX can play together to create an efficient and economical network design.



Digital Cities Summit Sponsors

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