If Plant City residents and visitors want to connect a mobile device to the Internet in the downtown district, they will have to enter a business that offers Wi-Fi to its customers. The public Wi-Fi installed in McCall Park will be taken down within the next month.
The Wi-Fi equipment was installed about 10 years ago.
“There was a big push back then for municipal Wi-Fi,” said Bill McDaniel, assistant city manager for public safety. “A lot of cities were installing these big umbrella networks, and it was supposed to be the next big utility.”
The city’s IT department intended for Wi-Fi in McCall Park to be a test of this public service. It is Plant City’s only free municipal Wi-Fi network, other than the network within City Hall.
But, like any piece of technology, the equipment became outdated and obsolete. Updates to the physical hardware would have cost $18,000. When city officials formed next year’s budget several months ago, they decided to discontinue the municipal Wi-Fi instead of purchasing equipment replacements.
Kent Andrel, director of information technology for the city, said the Wi-Fi would be disconnected Oct. 1. Shortly after, the department will remove the hardware: four Hewlett-Packard access points.
One of the access points is located outside of City Hall. The other three are in McCall Park, in the form of small boxes with antennae. Theoretically, each has a range of 300 feet, which would provide a signal throughout the entire park, as well as into the city blocks on each side of the park. But, the signal has not always worked as intended.
“The other problem that we run into down there is that the tree canopy is so large, it basically eats our signal,” McDaniel said. “It generates a lot of complaints from people who try to connect.”
The thick walls of downtown buildings contribute to this problem, as well.
The Wi-Fi equipment has suffered a decade of outdoor weathering, so it is not in top condition.
“If any of it is still functional, we’ll put it in for the network here in City Hall or something … but it’s probably just going to have to be scrapped,” McDaniel said.
Whatever cannot be salvaged will be taken to an e-waste recycling facility.
The city will not attempt to install municipal Wi-Fi again in the near future.
Contact Catherine Sinclair at csinclair@plantcityobserver.com.