High-Impact for the City of Pleasanton

Like many municipalities worldwide, the City of Pleasanton, California, was plagued by the lack of available bandwidth for critical city-wide safety infrastructure. With over 70,000 residents, the city is one of the wealthiest mid-sized cities in the United States. But while many remote City facilities were able to get WAN connectivity with pre-existing DSL or fiber connections, there were still many critical areas in the City without sufficient connectivity or bandwidth.

Mobile Data Computers for special police and fire fighter operations were either not connected, or struggled with low bandwidth, affecting the City’s ability to deliver newer technologies requiring sustained connectivity and larger bandwidth. Pleasanton logically turned to a wireless solution, but the bandwidth provided by early-generation 5 GHz radios was only enough to satisfy a handful of users, and discussions with telecommunication providers quickly revealed fiber’s massive price tag.

Mimosa Offers Unique Public Safety Solution

FCC rules designate the 4.9 GHz spectrum band specifically for “entities providing public safety services,” namely, “any territory, possession, state, city, county, town, or similar State or local government entity” and includes non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that also provide public safety services. With fewer than 3,000 of these licenses currently assigned in this band across the country, a huge benefit for these entities is the ability to exploit up to 50 MHz of clean, quiet spectrum for transmission of this high-priority Internet traffic

“Installation of the network was seamless with no disruption to our service. The infrastructure was put in place while services were still live and then we just coordinated the cut-over.”

With a pressing need for higher throughput and greater reliability, the City of Pleasanton turned to Mimosa to help plan its network and install new radios. Offering the highest throughput of any backhaul certified in the 4.9 GHz public safety spectrum, Mimosa recommended its B5c backhaul radio to leverage the 4.9 GHz band for service to the local Police Department.

The result? More than double the bandwidth at a much lower cost.

Christopher Gerochi, IT Coordinator for the City of Pleasanton explained, “Installation of the network was seamless with no disruption to our service. The infrastructure was put in place while services were still live and then we just coordinated the cut-over.”

In crowded urban and suburban areas with limited available spectrum, one of the most important features of any Mimosa backhaul radio is its ability to synchronize multiple links and re-use channels, vastly increasing the total amount of throughput. As a result, the City of Pleasanton is now able to stream incredibly high-quality surveillance footage to its Police Department headquarters, thus improving public safety

“In one location, the number of staff members has been growing steadily. When we started using a VoIP phone system, we were very worried about bandwidth. Not anymore.”

“It was pretty noisy out there using unlicensed spectrum. Being able to use the 4.9 GHz spectrum is reassuring as now we don’t compete with anyone else in that band,” said Gerochi. “In one location, the number of staff members has been growing steadily. When we started using a VoIP phone system, we were very worried about bandwidth. Not anymore.”

What’s Next?

With the boost provided by Mimosa’s unique networking capabilities, the City of Pleasanton is exploring expansions of onsite surveillance across the city. They will continue to leverage the 4.9 GHz band, confident that in “just a couple of clicks” the Police Department will benefit from real-time images when problems arise, and plan to explore installing virtual desktops that can be used across all offices. Given the historically low available bandwidth, these possibilities had never before been an option. “We are excited about what is now possible,” concludes Gerochi.

Get Mimosa

The City of Pleasanton has taken its network to the next level. Let Mimosa do the same for your company. The next generation of broadband is here. Contact us for the latest and availability in Mimosa products.