CITY OF TUCSON
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LOCAL GOVERNMENT
CONNECTING TUCSON The City of Tucson has undergone significant technological transformation over the past few years, we take a closer look Writer: Sean Galea-Pace | Project Manager: Tom Cullum
T
he City of Tucson is a vibrant place. Surrounded by the beautiful Sonoran Desert, the city offers a plethora of attractions ranging from outdoor activities, sightseeing, eateries and entertainment while playing host to millions of tourists every year. The city sits as Arizona’s
second largest city with over 542,000 residents and presents truly breathtaking views from left to right.
THE JOURNEY TO CONNECTIVITY Today, the City of Tucson is in the midst of becoming a smart city and
is introducing a Citizens Broadband Radio Network which will allow remote learning and multiple smart city applications in follow-on phases. Indeed, the city has connected around 1,000 children from less affluent households to the internet, however, aims to use the network for a variety of North America Outlook issue 05 | 3
CITY OF TUCSON
JMA Wireless For many cities JMA Wireless works with, there’s a perception that nextgeneration connectivity comes at a cost beyond the reach of municipal budgets. Not only is this false, it inevitably costs underserved and under-connected citizens the most. Faced with the reality that 32 percent of residents did not have high-speed Internet connectivity, the City of Tucson looked for a new way to deliver connectivity that would both save costs and fund the deployment of a next-generation network, while expanding connectivity for underserved citizens. Tucson’s challenge for JMA and its partners was urgent: it needed to expand connectivity to households lacking essential access during the pandemic. For its immediate concerns, the city identified 20 square miles where the digital divide was the deepest. Looking forward, Tucson also wanted infrastructure to accelerate its smart city ambitions. Deploying Wi-Fi, the city would have to maintain thousands of access points to cover just a fraction of the immediate area. Enter JMA to provide the network infrastructure for CBRS, an emerging alternative to traditional Wi-Fi offering secure connection over larger areas.
services ranging from smart city IoT operations to a city-operated regional cell phone offering. Due to the ever-increasing need for remote learning on the back of COVID-19, school districts across Tucson faced the collective problem that many households couldn’t afford to connect their schoolchildren to the internet. With limited resources and budgets, school districts approached the city’s IT department to see how they could assist with the issue. It was a sizable and unprecedented challenge for the city; however, the city embraced the disruption and developed a strategic plan that 4 | North America Outlook issue 05
began with a school and city-county partnership. Local municipal assets such as city fiber and building rooftops and towers, combined with federal grant money, resulted in a viable plan to solve the student connectivity issue near-time, while also creating a network that could benefit the community elsewhere long-term. A wi-fi approach was considered, however, the required equipment, installation resources and related costs to connect the 31 neighborhoods, five school districts and almost 100,000 students proved challenging. Subsequently, the city evaluated LTE and CBRS,
JMA’s one-of-a-kind solution leveraged advanced network hardware and fully-upgradable XRAN software to serve free, reliable broadband internet to five school districts and 5,000 households. That’s only Phase 1. As Tucson progresses towards its smart city vision, JMA’s aforementioned software will require zero costly hardware upgrades, bringing the promise of a more connected and more equitable future within grasp.
www.jmawireless.com
DELIVERING ESSENTIAL CONNECTIVITY to America’s underserved communities
A disruptive force in the wireless industry, JMA Wireless is restoring U.S. leadership in wireless technology at a critical time in the transition to 5G. That begins with delivering essential connectivity to communities caught in the digital divide. In cities like Tucson, JMA’s 5G-ready solution is extending a connectivity lifeline to the most underserved citizens, at the same time deploying the requisite wireless infrastructure to fulfill the promise of a smarter, safer, more equitable future.
Visit jmawireless.com
CITY OF TUCSON identified key advantages they offer, such as signal reach, performance, proven security, seamless mobility and ultimately that became the foundation for the municipal solution.
WORKING TOGETHER Geoverse, a private cellular network operator, confirmed it is the managed service partner for the City of Tucson’s Citizens Broadband Radio Network (CBRS) network implement throughout Tucson. The city’s private network is one of the largest municipal cellular deployments implemented across the United States. The city has deployed the Geoverse Geocore Evolved Packet Core (EPC) as the critical control element to manage the CBRS radio
network infrastructure from JMA Wireless, the Spectrum Access Service from Google and the many user devices. Mobile devices and end points will be populated with a Geoverse SIM card, enabling them to securely connect to the private network and utilize capabilities such as roaming if they travel off-net. The municipal network provides high-performance wireless connectivity with download speeds of 50 Mbps. Additionally, the Geocore Service platform allows for network slicing across the cellular network, meaning that several virtual networks can each be dedicated to specific functions to better manage city infrastructure domains. Use cases include connecting the city’s network
TUCSON’S ENVIRONMENTAL AND GENERAL SERVICES The mission of the Environmental Services Department is to promote a healthy and sustainable Tucson community by offering innovative and effective waste management and environmental protection services. These environmental services offer the citizens of Tucson and businesses trash collection and disposal. Other services include:
Connection A proud IT partner for the City of Tucson, Connection Public Sector Solutions has been working with state and local governments for nearly 40 years. Connection was fortunate to be involved with the scoping of the city’s recent 4G LTE network build project. We worked very closely with the City of Tucson’s team with the design and prework process. Connection also supports the City’s network, client, software, and IT hardware needs. Our expert guidance, exceptional service, and innovative strategies empower our customers to make informed IT investment decisions.
www.connection.com/SL
Integration Partners
• Recycling and waste reduction services. • Operating the city’s Los Reales Landfill in compliance with State and Federal regulations. • Cleaning up groundwater at old landfills. • Ensuring that the city’s air quality and industrial waste discharge permits are up-to-date and in compliance.
Integration Partners is an awardwinning, nationwide IT services engineering firm specializing in solutions that are open, scalable and drive to greater productivity and competitiveness for our clients. Our solutions and services portfolio provides enterprises with Cloud, Security, Core Infrastructure, C L O U D and Managed SECURITY Collaboration, Services.C O R E
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LOCAL GOVERNMENT
YOUR GUIDE TO BETTER TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS At Connection® Public Sector Solutions, we work with you to design and build technology solutions that deliver the results you need—within your timeframe and budget. For decades, state and local governments have turned to us for help increasing productivity, efficiency, and savings. Learn what it’s like to have a team of experts on your side. Contact an Account Manager today. 1.800.800.0019 www.connection.com/SL ©2021 PC Connection, Inc. All rights reserved. Connection® and we solve IT® are trademarks of PC Connection, Inc. All other copyrights and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners. C1447271-0821
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CITY OF TUCSON of traffic lights, monitoring and managing its critical water systems, serving city parks and recreational spaces with public wi-fi and connecting first responders. It will also be the platform to offer its city staff low-cost, high-performance internet service. Further, Tucson is beginning to leverage data to bring change inside the city. However, there are challenges to the installation of networking equipment. The city has had to implement filtering technologies to prevent users from leveraging the network to access pornography and other unsuitable content, similar to how a library operates its public internet services. Subsequently, the city had to staff a call center to answer questions from users that wondered why they couldn’t access banned services and websites. According to the Rand Corporation, around 20 percent of school districts have already adopted, plan to adopt
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or are considering adopting virtual school as part of their district portfolio following the COVID-19 pandemic. This is while many rural and undeserved families go without reliable service. As remote learning continues to be a popular method of education, there is an expectation that virtual and hybrid learning models could become the norm over the upcoming years which could mean universal connectivity is a necessity rather than something that is nice to have. The first 5,000 endpoint devices will focus on connecting teleworker and students, while phase two will focus on deploying endpoints and network core infrastructure with a strategic focus on public transportation and other public areas to maximize resident access. It is thought that the next phase of the plan will help equip around 70 to 80 percent of Tucson with LTE access.
Tilson Tilson is on a mission to build America’s information infrastructure. From initial site surveys to deployment, Tilson worked with the City of Tucson and other key partners to deploy one of the largest cityowned CBRS / private-LTE networks in the United States. Today, Tucson residents and businesses benefit from higher speeds that connect them to jobs, critical healthcare services, virtual classrooms and much more. To learn more about Tilson visit: www.tilsontech.com.
www.tilsontech.com
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Leveraging Private LTE to Bridge Tucson’s Digital Divide Nationwide footprint for turn-key fiber and wireless network deployments In-house real estate, engineering, and construction capabilities Network operations and maintenance center, 24/7 dispatch Infrastructure development, ownership, and leaseback Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) in 50 states
CONTACT: info@tilsontech.com | 207.591.6427 | www.tilsontech.com
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CITY OF TUCSON
Solving the digital divide is an important concern. With around 80 percent of the people that applied to Tucson’s program having no access to the internet, the city acknowledges that it had underestimated how many people had no access to connectivity to even use the city government websites. While the pandemic created a number of challenges to overcome for the public sector, it also allowed for a different way of thinking in regards to public-private infrastructure partnerships and Tucson is playing its part in helping to close the digital inbalance. However, it is clear that the city’s work is not finished yet.
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LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Rattlesnake Bridge in Tucson, Arizo Head end of the diamondback rattlesnake bicycle and pedestrian covered bridge over Broadway Blvd. at the Barraza -Aviation Parkwa,y just east of downtown Tucson
STRATEGIC AMBITIONS With digital transformation continuing to seep into the city’s core, optimization flows through Tucson’s strategy. Inside Tucson today, there is a large amount of automation, and the city is seeking to optimize workflow continuously for the city’s citizens. Focusing on the city’s talent management strategy, training employees is a key component of long-term growth for Tucson. The city wants to continue to support its employees, and this comes from training for technologies available but is about implementing new methods that empowers its people. The city remains primed to expand
its connectivity drive and is seeking ways to fund the second phase of the network, which would support internet connections in public locations and on city buses. The second phase is anticipated to take place over the next two years. The city is undertaking several sustainability initiatives. In terms of the environment, Tucson is developing a smart city ecosystem where it is deploying sensors throughout the city. Tucson will begin to pull in data and work out how to make decisions on environment stability. The city is seeking to build a bridge that allows its citizens to connect with politicians as well as the
departments to allow for a greater sustainability drive. Ultimately, the City of Tucson has a vision to be regarded as a government agency that doesn’t feel like government. However, in order to make this a reality, the city needs to be agile and continuously change to the evolving environment. Progress is well underway.
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