City of Douglasville Advances with Municipal WiFi for Downtown

The City of Douglasville in collaboration with Google, Network Utility Force of Atlanta, and Aerohive of California, is advancing toward the May 1, 2013 implementation date of a 60 acre combined service area of free WiFi to the downtown Douglasville area and selected City park locations.

The municipal WiFi network, expected to be completed by May 1st, 2013, will cover downtown Douglasville, Hunter Memorial Park and Jessie Davis Park, almost 60 acres collectively, making it one of the largest public WiFi networks in Georgia. Jeff Noles, Executive Director for the City of Douglasville Development Authority, stated, “building a free, public WiFi network for downtown and two major parks will be a significant asset for the citizens and visitors of Douglasville, enhancing the experience of our festivals, parades, concerts, sports, and other events throughout the year.”

The origin of this project was birthed out of an initial meeting in April 2012 between Mayor – Harvey Persons, Jeff Noles – Executive Director of the City of Douglasville Development Authority, and Bill Osborne – City Manager, to place WiFi capabilities in the City’s parks. The Mayor commissioned key staff to explore the possibilities of designing an infrastructure that would incorporate the Downtown area and provide a footprint to build upon and broaden with Douglasville’s future. The Mayor, along with key staff, approached Google with the idea of partnership and support for the project. Google’s trend is to establish strong partnerships within the communities they reside. This joint venture is a continuing investment of the Google community outreach program. “Google is committed to giving back to our data center communities, and free municipal WiFi will help the city of Douglasville continue to be a leading metro-Atlanta community, as well as attract new businesses to the area,” said Walter Susong, Technical Program Manager at Google.

The collaborative effort for a project of this magnitude has required the cooperation, investment, and contractual relationship between several entities. Mayor Harvey Persons commented, “The joint business partnership to accomplish a project of this magnitude is yet another strong statement of business partnerships that are imperative to make a City and community a premiere locale. This amenity will serve the Douglasville community, our local residents, and our visitors from near and afar in our on-going endeavors to make Douglasville “The” premiere place to live, work, play, and raise a family.”

“We are honored to be a part of this project, one which will serve as a wireless model for modern municipalities,” stated Brandon Ross, Co-founder, CEO and Chief Network Architect of Network Utility Force. “To exceed network requirements, we’ll deploy industry leading WiFi hardware from Aerohive and Ubiquiti, as well as implement sophisticated network engineering to meet present and future network demands.”

Brice Layton, Vice President of Sales – Eastern US for Aerohive, commented, “This is an excellent opportunity for us. Our controller-less architecture with mesh capabilities, together with our high-powered, weather resistant outdoor access points (AP170) with dual radios and MIMO antennas are a natural fit.”

Network access will be free, and the deployment will be paid for by Google as part of its community outreach program.