As with many of you, my Wi- Fi connection is imperative. How else can a person update a fantasy team or Facebook page properly when at Starbucks?
But believe it or not, Wi-Fi has more significant uses and is transforming the way we do business – which is to say, making it more efficient and effective.
Wonderful. But new technology can also bring dubious consequences, especially when in the hands of the wrong people. And by wrong people, I mean government people.
Finding Wi-Fi in Denver isn’t particularly difficult (websites like and offer mapping of hotspots). Increasingly, cafes, restaurants and the like offer free wireless connections to lure customers. The relatively small cost makes one wonder why all of them haven’t done so.
For suburban metro Denver, however, connectivity is more problematic. So a group called Colorado Wireless Communities has hatched a plan with the potential to reshape how municipalities across the country bring Wi-Fi to citizens.
If everything goes according to plan, the group will erect a massive network that spans 10 cities and 130,000-plus square miles and provides the option of Wi-Fi to hundreds of thousands of people in the area around north and west metro Denver.
The cities of Arvada, Boulder, Broomfield, Golden, Lakewood, Louisville, Northglenn, Superior, Thornton and Wheat Ridge have all signed up in hope of providing continuous coverage across the entire area.
Assistant Arvada City Manager Clark Johnson, the group’s president, tells me that after looking at numerous proposals, board members unanimously awarded the project to a local company, C-Com. They are now in the process of negotiating specifics.
“After a year and half working on this project, the more we talk to people in the community, the more I realize they have expectations about technological infrastructure,” says Clark. “There are sewer and water pipes, but now, the more I talk to people, the more they realize they want technology infrastructure as well.”
That’s nice. But those who believe that Wi-Fi is a “right” and must be provided to them are, of course, wrong. Clark understands that residents have a desire for more technology and more competition. So this plan, which does not use tax dollars and isn’t government-run, will allow individuals to shop outside C-Com for their connections – which is imperative in keeping costs down.
“This all came about because we were looking at some different things around the country and what worked and didn’t,” explains Clark.
“We spoke to elected officials and IT professionals who all understand the great uses of wireless broadband networks. Individually, as cities, we couldn’t attract a large enough project for a good market. … Together, we could bring together a better network that makes financial sense.”
On the group’s site (colorado- ), you can view all the motivation for assembling the network. You can also read about some of the public-safety rationale.
“Real-time filing of reports from the field.” “Real-time intelligence sharing and remote access to databases.” “Real- time video streaming from incident scene to headquarters.”
And, “video surveillance via security cameras.”
Though it’s more of a pet peeve than an Orwellian worry, I’m not crazy about cameras. And I’m not crazy about consumers paying for an infrastructure that could mean two dozen cameras every square mile.
“Cameras are just one of the potential uses that have been proven effective in other parts of the country,” says Clark. “In other parts of the country, they have used it in high- crime areas. These cameras are very easy to move around and have a feed directly back to the dispatch. They work.”
Yeah … I don’t like the sound of that. And often huge trans-community projects like this sound appealing but become a nightmare when enacted. As always, the devil is in the details.
Still, Colorado Wireless Communities seems to have gone to great lengths to bring something workable and flexible to residents.
Not that it matters, of course. Wi-Fi is coming soon, whether you want it or not.
David Harsanyi’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.
