Miami Beach WiFi

For the last year or so, Sunny Isles Beach has been looking into the possibility of providing free wireless Internet service to its employees, residents and guests.
Now it's in the process of hiring a consultant to help it narrow its options and figure out exact costs.
''We'd like to start the new budget year with WiFi built into the budget,'' Mayor Norman Edelcup said.
Time is ticking to get the project onto next year's budget because preliminary budgets are released in July and finally adopted in September. Consultants who want the job have until June 22 to return their sealed bids to the city clerks office.
''We aren't bidding to go ahead with the project,'' City IT Director Derrick Arias said. ``We are simply bidding for a consultant to tell us our options and most importantly put hard numbers together.''
The final decision must be voted on by the commission, but Arias sees the city as having three options.
The most comprehensive and expensive option would be to build a wireless network that would allow people in any part of the city, from ground level to the top of the highest condo, to hook into the Internet.
The second option would be to cover the whole city and give high-rise condos the option of purchasing their own hardware to hook into the city-provided network.
The third, and least expensive option, would be to make wireless Internet available for all emergency and city workers, and have it available to the public in designated areas like city parks.
''This is a project that I've been behind for the past couple of years since WiFi became available in many cities throughout the U.S.,'' Edelcup said.
Rather than use cords, wireless Internet, commonly know as WiFi, connects computers to the Internet using radio signals.
Arias said he's basing his vision for the network on Miami Beach, which in March entered into a multimillion-dollar contract to install wireless Internet throughout the city.