How much does it cost to build an open source, open architecture muni network?

I am sure many of you have already read about Jupiter Research’s report on the cost of setting up a municipal Wi-Fi network. The numbers are interesting and until I read the entire document, I cannot say whether I agree or not.

I am sure many of you have already read about Jupiter Research’s report on the cost of setting up a municipal Wi-Fi network. The numbers are interesting and until I read the entire document, I cannot say whether I agree or not.

But here’s Sascha Meinrath’s blog post containing detailed calculations of how much it would cost to build a citywide Wi-Fi network that is non-proprietary and uses open source softare and open architecture hardware.

Here’s his calculation for a 1000-node network:

$350,000 — Node Costs of Hardware & Software
$250,000 — Setup, Construction, & Installation (5hrs/per node @ $50/hour)
$5,000 — Server Equipment (per network)
$30,000 — Node Upkeep Costs (10% Node Failure Rate Equivalent)
$15,000 — Electricity for One Year
$60,000 — Bandwidth for one year
TOTAL: $710,000

Plus yearly maintenance and upkeep costs of $155,000/year and estimated monthly cost per node/house and break even point:
$28.33 — Over 3 Years
$22.17 — Over 5 Years
$17.54 — Over 10 years

You can see how he arrived at these numbers by going to his blog post. He calculates costs for 25-, 50-, 100-, 250- and 1000 node networks.

If you have comments please email them to me.