Today, most applications used by city residents and visitors to BID’s, sits on the cloud operating from server “farms” across the country. Although most end-users don’t see the inherited latency as the data travels between the cloud servers and their mobile devices, most cities are keenly aware of the latency and the impact it has on public safety services like connectivity, security cameras and download and uploading mission critic files.
Wi-Fi is the ultimate communication tool. BID's and Muni are leveraging Wi-Fi connectivity to support and manage security cameras, pedestrian counters, and other assets. One of the most overlooked advantages of having a turnkey BID or Muni Wi-Fi network is information campaigns.
At the end of 2019, the total free Wi-Fi traffic amounted to about 3,437 million gigabytes. The traffic volume is forecast to grow around threefold by 2023. As of the leading Municipal Wi-Fi companies in the nation, creating a localized workforce to help install and maintain our networks, as one of our core tenors over the past ten years.
As restaurants, bars, and public spaces continue to open up (post-COVID-19), BID's are looking at new ways to incentivize visitors to visit and return to their businesses. In tangent, businesses are setting up outdoor seating to help promote social distancing and reduce time indoors.
COVID shook the ground underneath all BID’s and Municipalities. Municipalities had to shift critical dollars to address the immediate health crisis while BID’s have seen businesses destroyed by mandated closing and social distancing policy.
As businesses across the U.S. navigate recent civil unrest, the boarding up of store windows is the defacto (cheap and quick) way to protect storefronts. Urbanists have long known how boarding has negatively impacted neighborhoods where the visual cues make it feel neglected and abandoned.
Traditionally, Business Improvement Districts and Municipalities have leveraged cellular services to connect security cameras, pedestrian counters and sensors to capture critical data. The issue of using cellular service is that cost often priced prohibitive, making it difficult for BID’s and Muni’s to scale.
Beyond providing connectivity and a branding presence, W-Fi can be leveraged for a series of BID specific applications. Our client base uses Wi-Fi to run security cameras, sensors, and pedestrian counters, to name a few. In the right creative hands, Wi-Fi can be leveraged to bring people back to the BID in a post COVID world, and one way is with Scavenger Hunts.
The sounds of revving engines and screeching tires have become a nightly occurrence across BID and cities, scrabbling already taxed police departments to conduct nightly radar patrols. In larger municipalities with gunshot sound detections, revving engines have caused a series of false positive, draining additional police resources.