Date: April 5, 2007

Presenter: Hesham Ali, Ph.D.

Affiliation: University of Nebraska at Omaha - College of Information Science and Technology

The guest speaker for this meeting was Hesham Ali, Ph.D., Dean of the College of Information Science and Technology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Dr. Ali discussed "The Metro Omaha Wireless Project" and providee an overview of the current project and possibilities for extending the wireless service.

Many cities are undergoing an infrastructure build-out with wireless Internet access. There are plenty of issues to investigate and include community technophiles in the discussion. Should the entire city be covered, just the economically disadvantaged areas, only the parks and school campuses, or simply the downtown area? Should the city government be able to leverage the build-out by getting free services from the vendor? Is the service going to be "free for all" or "pay as you go" or free slow speed access with paid high speed access? What technology should be used - Wi-Fi or Wi-Max or a combination?

These questions and many more are being debated throughout the country. One city announced the winner of the public bid only to retract the entire proposal and re-write it for an entirely new direction. These proposals are expensive for companies to develop for bid - we hope Omaha gets it right the first time.