BROWN COUNTY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The City of Green Bay is adding Wi-Fi to several parks. Howard, Suamico, and Hobart will have nearly 500 miles of fiber cables installed underground to build stronger Wi-Fi connections.
Throughout the pandemic, reliable Wi-Fi has become a necessity for all types of people.
“Whether you’re talking about students in school or obviously the private sector and public sector, running meetings, I mean you need stable Wi-Fi,” said Green Bay alderperson for district 9, Brian Johnson.
To help Green Bay become a smart city, city council approved plans to add Wi-Fi to four city parks: Seymour, Navarino, St. John and Eastman.
“They parks were just an ideal place, that’s where people are going to congregate and patch into Wi-Fi and utilize that for school, work, any other type of social activity,” said Johnson.
Green Bay’s neighboring towns will also undergo a major broadband project soon.
TDS Fiber, a Madison-based company, will be adding underground fiber cables to Howard, Suamico, and Hobart. The company will install underground fiber optic cables, connecting nearly 20,000 addresses across the three communities.
“There’s huge household formations in this area. You’re seeing all sorts of economic growth and development, and we love communities that have significant household formation,” said Drew Petersen, the senior vice president of corporate affairs for TDS.
Peterson tells FOX 11 that TDS will be able to offer customers two gigabits of internet speed, the company’s fastest ever, as well as phone and TV services.
“At the end of the day this is the price of technology progress and when complete these three communities will have some of the most well-wired infrastructure in, Wisconsin, certainly if not the country.”.
TDS estimates the cost of the project will be around $40 million and will take two to three years to complete.
Green Bay’s parks Wi-Fi project will cost over $250,000. The city is using federal CARES funding, which had to be spent on a broadband project in low to moderate-income neighborhoods.
TDS will be working on a similar fiber network project in the Fox Cities. The company is also nearing completion on similar projects in Wausau and Stevens Point.
Comments