Intel this morning announced a new international initiative to help communities build out wireless infrastructure and expand broadband penetration. The Digital Communities initiative, led by Intel but including other technology companies such as Cisco Systems, Dell, IBM and SAP, will highlight 13 pilot cities where they are helping city governments to build wireless networks and develop wireless applications that enable those governments to operate more efficiently.

The four initial pilot cities are Corpus Christi, Texas; Cleveland; Philadelphia; and Taipei, Taiwan. Other pilot cities include Portland, Oregon; Mangaratiba and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Duesseldorf, Germany; Gyor, Hungary; Jerusalem, Israel; Principality of Monaco; Seoul, South Korea; Osaka, Japan; and Westminster, London.

Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell said her city views network technology as critical to economic rebuilding and is using wireless technology to make basic city functions more efficient. For example, city building inspectors have replaced their clipboards and hand-written notes with wireless devices that automatically create documentation and feed it into the legal process for handling buildings in disrepair.

"Before, days and weeks would pass before the information was fed into the court system," she said. "We have had rough economic times, so we had to make due with 700 fewer employees, so we had to be more efficient."

Both Campbell and Corpus Christi City Manager Skip Noe said the wireless technology is enabling or will soon enable video streaming technology to link police cars and ambulances to police headquarters and hospital emergency rooms respectively to deliver realtime information that can aid first responders.

The bigger goal is to stimulate greater broadband penetration, particularly in the U.S., said Paul Butcher, state and local marketing manager for Intel, by focusing not on the infrastructure itself but how it is used.

“What we are trying to accomplish through the Digital Communities initiative is to show there is economic value, business value in these wireless clouds by focusing on solutions and tools that reside underneath the wireless cloud,” Butcher said. “The focus has been on the cable and fiber, but that’s talking about the pipe, not the tools. You can put any kind of pipe out there — sewer, water, electricity – but unless you are enacting some kind of tool, you are not changing anyone’s life.”

Noe said Corpus Christi is now actively seeking service providers who can provide access to businesses and consumers using the wireless infrastructure the city has created.

"We’ve identified the fact tha the city is probably not the best provider of service down to end user," Noe said. "We view that as private sector responsibility. We are having a dialog with those who are interested on how they can take this investment and leverage it for private individual an business use. Right now we are trialing general use for free, and we will have access in public buildings on a gratis basis."

Corpus Christi also has worked with SAP to develop a WiFi-capable vehicle location system that allows the city to track municipal vehicles for “pennies on the dollar,” Butcher said. Traditional fleet management programs cost $9000 a year per vehicle.

In general, the city governments' focus is to make its workers, many of whom are mobile, more efficient while providing better service.

"None of us would be tethered if it wasn't for the fact that the environment requires us to be tethered," said Anand Chandrasekher, vice president and director, Intel Sales and Marketing Group.

“The idea is not to fill up our lives with more technology,” Butcher said. “It is to give people back three to five hours a day by making their work more efficient.”

Creating a wireless infrastructure that saturates a municipality also lays the ground work for delivering basic service, such as voice over IP, as well as wireless data access to the masses, Butcher said. While acknowledging the opposition of many incumbent service providers to municipally owned and operated telecom networks, he said the Digital Communities initiative is intended to encourage public-private partnerships and to engage service providers in that effort.

“What we are starting to realize is that service providers and cities can work in partnership to achieve the goals of both,” he said. “The elected officials are very interested in making sure that every citizen, every business has access to broadband. If you get them to work together, I think this is starting to happen.”

Butcher concedes, however, that fundamental to the Digital Communities initiative is the belief that it should be up to local communities to determine their own needs, and the group will actively oppose any federal/state legislation to limit municipal networks.

"Trials are being planned in Taipei on WiMAX in their environment," Chandrasekher said. "And there is a trial in Jerusalem. The WiMAX trial will probably take place within this year."