Stratford

The Wi-Fi City

Stratford, Ontario has many notable features: the yearly Shakespeare festival, the scenic buildings in town, and even a University of Waterloo (UWaterloo) satellite campus. However, the feature that brings tech companies running to Stratford from as far as Silicon Valley is their citywide Wi-Fi network.

Technology in Stratford

Picture of a worker in stratford setting up wifi

Bell Canada is the internet service provider in Stratford, Ontario. Stratford also owns their own company to implement infrastructure in the city to make the Internet widely accessible. Rhyzome Networks, the data infrastructure company owned by the city of Stratford, has installed more than 50km of fiber optic cables [1] to enable connectivity throughout the city. Rhyzome has also put up 11 keg shaped access points (as of July 2015) [2] at strategic points throughout the city to make Wi-Fi reliable and strong throughout the city center. The Wi-Fi is run with the same IEEE 802.11 2.4GHz/5GHz dual band as here at UWaterloo [3].  

What a city-wide network can offer

Many municipalities in Canada offer free network access to residents and visitors. Most of those networks are limited to the city center but Stratford offers a wireless network that spans the whole city, all twelve square kilometers of it.

The Wi-Fi network provides a variety of benefits to the city, including:

  • Tracking criminal activity,
  • Finding underused gym space, and
  • Reducing emergency response times.

These goals are accomplished by including light sensors, motion sensors, and other types of sensors in city infrastructure and then uploading large amounts of data to open data repositories. From the publicly accessible databases, information is available to assist the public [4].

What is Stratford doing with their network?

Picture of a car in stratford

Stratford is working to become a testing facility for self-driving cars. The town has already installed some of the infrastructure: City-Wide networking and a closed network system that involves the roads and streetlights. So far, at least one company is interested: QNX, a Blackberry-owned communication company. QNX found that traveling back and forth to Silicon Valley to test their products is expensive and inefficient, especially when they have to ship cars [5]. Stratford is a much more accessible, real world and local environment where QNX can test their equipment.

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References


[1]”How a small Ontario city is betting on the future by becoming a hub for self-driving cars” CBC News. Web. 19 Jan 2017. < http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/driverless-cars-stratford-1.3390279>.

[1]”About Us-Rhyzome Networks.” Rhyzome. Web. 20 Jan 2017. < https://rhyzome.ca/home/>.

[2]”Free Wi-Fi downtown” Beacon Herald. Web. 20 Jan 2017. <http://www.stratfordbeaconherald.com/2015/07/07/stratfords-rhyzome-networks-turns-downtown-stratford-into-wifi-hotspot>.

[3]”Wireless – What you need to know” Information Systems & Technology. Web. 31 Jan 2017. <https://uwaterloo.ca/information-systems-technology/about/organizational-structure/technology-integrated-services-tis/network-services-resources/wireless-what-you-need-know>.

[4]”Thinking About Smart Cities” University of Waterloo. Web. 7 Feb 2017. <https://uwaterloo.ca/stratford-campus/blog/post/thinking-about-smart-cities>.

[5]”Stratford seeks starring role in self-driving car technology” The Record. Web. 19 Jan 2017. < http://www.therecord.com/news-story/6306550-stratford-seeks-starring-role-in-self-driving-car-technology/>.

[6] [Wifi]. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://wifinowevents.com/2015/europe/wp-content/uploads/CityWiFi.jpg