Crunching Numbers: CUWiN vs. Tropos -- Costs to Wireless 1-square Mile.

I recently read on WiFiNetNews that Tropos Networks has announced it would cost $68,000 for the equipment necessary to network one square mile. And a lot of folks have been asking me how much it would cost to network a square mile using a CUWiN-based system. I recently gave a presentation at Open Space Austin on the costs for community networks which gave me a reason to pull together some rough estimates.

So here's some numbers for a CUWiN-based system (along with the information that went into coming up with these estimates). I would strongly encourage Tropos to do likewise and let consumers know how they came up with their own cost estimates.

1 square mile = 27,878,400 square feet.

CUWiN's existing network has links as short as about 100 meters, and as long as 400 meters (or more). So I've broken down the network cost estimates into a "low-", "medium-", and "high-cost" breakdowns to give an honest assessment of the potential spread for different geographies.

*Notes: Current costs for the equipment CUWiN uses are $350/node. Radii are based on connectivity distances between nodes (i.e., coverage area may be larger, but these are the effective distances between two nodes in the coverage are).

Given these estimates, in a worst-case scenario a company, neighborhood, or municipality will save 25% using open-source, open-architecture systems like CUWiN. And, obviously, the cost-savings just go up from there.