LTC 272-2014 City Wi-Fi System . r
® 2014 AUG -7 PN 2' 56
MIAMIBEACH
_- ` 0 r I
�I _ .,iF g' I C,E
OFFICE OF THE CITY MANAGER
NO. LTC # 272-2014 LETTER TO COMMISSION
TO: Mayor Philip Levine and Members of the Cit Commission
FROM: Jimmy L. Morales, City Manager k
DATE: August 7, 2014
SUBJECT: City Wi-Fi System
The purpose of this Letter to Commission is to provide information and statistics that were
considered by the City Commission last year (September 24, 2013) regarding the utilization of
the wireless Miami Beach Wi-Fi project when they accepted the recommendation in the FY
2014 budget to discontinue funding the system. Since a few individuals have reached out to
some of you recently regarding their loss of the free Wi-Fi service, I thought it would be useful to
revisit the analysis provided last year.
The WiFi Miami Beach project began with an RFP issued in July 2005. The City entered into an
agreement with IBM in March 2006. An official "wire" cutting ceremony took place on October
30, 2009 and the network entered into a reliability period of 90 days during which the network
was available for all users.
The City Manager accepted the network on January 29, 2010. After the system was accepted,
as per the contract terms, the City started to pay IBM for maintenance as detailed in Table 1
below. Additionally, the City budgeted annually for replacing parts that were not covered by the
maintenance and warranty provided by IBM ($60,000) and for the cost of the FPL agreement
(approximately $13,000).
Table 1: Fee Schedule
Fiscal Year FPL Budgeted HIN Contingency IBM Maintenance Total
half of FY 09-10 $ 13,000 $60,000 $264,424.50 $337,424.50
FY 10-11 $ 13,000 $60,000 $560,644.00 $633,644.00
FY 11-12 $ 13,000 $60,000 $610,024.50 $683,024.50
FY 12-13 $ 13,000 $60,000 $632,972.00 $705,972.00
FY 13-14 $ 13,000 $60,000 $651,392.00 $724,392.00
FY 14-15 $ 13,000 $60,000 $637,449.50 $710,449.50
half of FY 15-16 $ 13,000 $60,000 $305,224.50 $378 224.50
$91,000 $420,000 $3,662,131 $4,173,131
The projected maintenance costs moving forward were assumed to remain in the $710,000
range for the near future. Furthermore, every four years the City would need to assume an
I
additional estimated $1,250,000 for equipment replacement.
When I was appointed the City Manager last year, I learned early on that the Wi-Fi system had
not lived up to its expectations. First, the creation of the Wi-Fi network was supposed to
eliminate the need of the City to spend approximately $500,000 for its own internet service
needs. Unfortunately, because the system was slow and unreliable, it did not meet the City's
needs and the City continued to spend the $500,000 on internet services. Secondly, the
anecdotal information I received was that due to the slow and unreliable service, few people
actually used the system. I also understood that the system had physical limitations once you
went above a couple of stories in buildings. As such, I asked staff to determine how many of
our residents actually relied on this system in order to determine whether spending nearly 3/ of
a million dollars annually was justified.
On September 25, 2012, a new Portal was installed in the Wi-Fi system that began to maintain
user accounts based on the following two rules:
1. Users who Identified themselves as residents during the account creation process would
have their accounts deleted after 6 months of not logging in.
2. Users who identified themselves as visitors during the account creation process would
have their accounts deleted after 3 months of not logging in.
Using these two rules, the new Portal started to delete inactive accounts as highlighted below:
Date Total Registered Users Inactive Registered Users Deleted
4/9/13 35,600 15,108
4/10/13 20,492
4/29/13 23,424 3,162
4/30/13 20,262
5/30/13 24,815 4,735
5/31/13 20,080
6/29/13 24,214 5,578
6/30/13. 18,636
7/30/13 23,068 4,875
7/31/13 18,193
8/30/13 23,287 4,736
8/31/13 18,551
Additionally, a sample of the utilization statistics provided the following highlights:
• For the weeks of September 9 and September 16, 2013:
• every day = 247 users (Approximately 60 Residents and 185 Visitors)
• at least three days a week = 1,119 users (Approximately 280 Residents and 840
Visitors)
• at least once = 3,619 users (Approximately 850 Residents and 2,770 Visitors)
• The average age of all active user accounts is 87 days.
• There were approximately 15,000 visitor accounts and 5,000 resident accounts.
This data verified the anecdotal evidence that very few residents were regularly relying on the
system. Based on this data, the City Commission adopted a budget that eliminated funding for
the system.
The City asked IBM to provide an estimated annual cost savings based on redesigning the
system from providing coverage citywide to providing coverage at select locations. Although
IBM presented scenarios using approximately one-half and one-fourth as many WiFi routers as
are currently installed and maintained, the annual associated savings in maintenance would
have only ranged from $55,000 to $77,000.
In fiscal year 2013/14, the City began planning to re-scope the municipal WiFi project to deliver
an enhanced WiFi signal to select facilities, rather than citywide, thereby reducing the need for
annual funding from approximately $720,000 to $200,000. The City's IT department worked
closely with Executive Staff to determine the select facilities and implementation schedule. By
November of 2014, the IT department will have a free robust Wi-Fi system available at City Hall,
and it is anticipated that by April of 2015 the IT department will have free Wi-Fi also available at
North Shore Park Youth Center and Scott Rakow Youth Center. The goal is to eventually have
free Wi-Fi at all City parks and any other facilities that are regularly visited by the public.
In the meantime, the IT department has taken over the temporary maintenance of the City Wi-Fi
system. While the equipment is outdated and failing, we have done our best to continue to offer
free City Wi-Fi until such time that City Hall, North Shore Park Youth Center and Scott Rakow
Youth Center are online.
In conclusion, our free city-wide Wi-Fi system is failing and is on course to go offline by May 1,
2015. There is interest from our Police Department and Emergency Management to utilize
components of the Wi-Fi backbone for internal purposes.
Please contact me if you have any concerns or require additional information.
J