In October of 2005, the Honorable Mayor Bill White of the City of Houston announced an initiative to make wireless broadband services available throughout the City of Houston. The City issued two drafts of the RFP for public comment on February 17th and March 3rd of 2006. After consideration of public comments to the drafts, the City posted the final RFP on March 17, 2006. On April 4, 2006, the City of Houston held a pre-proposal conference for interested parties.
"We're going to use technology to help us meet some of our most important goals - making City Hall more efficient and responsive, making it easier to do business here, and improving Houstonians' quality of life," said Mayor Bill White.
The objectives of this initiative include:
Reducing the City government cost for mobile computing, i.e. parking meters, traffic signals, maintenance crews, field inspections, video and photography in police cars, maps and building plans in fire and EMS vehicles;
Reducing the monthly cost of broadband for residential and small business users from $30-$50 to $10-$20; and
Bridging the digital divide for disadvantaged communities/ individuals and promoting economic development and conventions/tourism.
The City intends to leverage its significant real estate holdings, as well as rights it may secure to assets owned by the local electric utility, to stimulate private investments and provide maximum value for the community. The City also intends to secure access to more than one (1) million street light and/or utility poles, which are owned by the local electric utility, and deployed in the City's rights-of-way.
The Request for Proposal (RFP) process was initiated as a result of the Greater Houston Partnership's publication of a white paper in October of 2005 calling for this type of initiative. Houston's initiative is similar to that of Philadelphia where Earth Link financed a $25 million network and San Francisco, which has selected the team of Google and Earth Link to negotiate an $8 million to $10 million investment for the Bay Area.
Houston's network would have three tiers of service:
Public service includes parking meters, traffic signals, maintenance crews, field inspectors, etc.;
Public Access for households, small businesses, tourisms, and conventioneers at affordable rates available across the city/region; and
Public Safety, i.e., police, fire, emergency medical services as the technologies improve and security concerns are addressed.
A desired outcome of the Digital Houston Initiative is to expand the use of broadband and other technologies to strengthen education, healthcare, employment, public safety and other services, which will be life-enhancing for Houston's underserved populations. Preference was given to comprehensive proposals that integrated common platforms and solutions to address the needs of low-income and underserved communities.
The effort to bring access, training, and devices to low-income and underserved communities is referred to as Digital Inclusion. The City has a well-established core of Community-Based Organizations (CBO), which will play a key role in the success of this initiative. As policies and programs are further implemented to encourage digital inclusion, design and deployment teams will focus their efforts on using emerging technologies as a tool to strengthen and support our existing community technology infrastructure. Strategies that promote a culture-of-use and digital skills in CBOs, and the constituencies they work with, are critical.
The City envisions that Digital Houston will focus on building economic, social, and cultural bridges between the diverse City neighborhoods and direct positive change within our City while leveraging Proposers' relationships and the rich diversity of Houston's CBOs. Community technology leaders in the City envision that the Network could provide significant new functionality and resources to address digital inclusion issues and enhance the quality of life.
The City of Houston received 5 proposals for the private financing and management of a wireless broadband infrastructure across the entire City. After phase one of the evaluation process, two finalists were identified. The City Of Houston has now entered into definitive negotiations with both finalists. Upon designation of the winning proposer, a contract will go to council for approval. The next action will be the implementation of the deployment plan and construction of the network.
