Leland Cuts the Cord: Opterex’s LelandCONNECT
Municipal Wireless Network
Story By William Chambers
Photography By Keith Ketchum
In a wire-cutting ceremony on Friday, March 26, the Town of Leland officially launched a new municipal wireless network system. This system, dubbed LelandCONNECT, promises to make town operations more efficient as well as offer new services to businesses and residents in the surrounding area.
The service is provided by Opterex (Olsen Enterprises Group Company), an advanced technology and communications services firm headquartered at Waterford in Leland.
“Leland’s location within Brunswick County, as well as its proximity to Wilmington, is ideally positioned for continued economic growth,” says Opterex’s Director of Strategic Planning Jack Manock. “LelandCONNECT has been engineered and designed to provide enhanced business-class connectivity and security to all activated users serving their specific Internet, voice and video needs.”
Several local dignitaries and town officials participated in the wire- cutting ceremony, including the Honorable Walter Futch, Mayor of Leland; Brenda Bozeman, Mayor Pro Tem; Bill Farris, Town Manager; Tim Jayne, Chief of Police; Jim Strickland, Director of Public Utilities; Frank Ramsey, Leland IT Manager; and several town council members.
“We are committed to ensuring that Leland maintains a future-focused commitment to our community, promoting economic development and business alliance creation, as well as enhancing our ability to serve and protect our private citizens and businesses utilizing Safe City technology,” Mayor Futch says.
The initial focus of LelandCONNECT is the Leland Police Department. The department will have the potential to equip police cars with wireless transmitters, receivers and laptops. With the new service comes the promise of enhanced safety and easier access to data by the officers in the field.
“An officer in the car, instead of going to the station, can write an arrest report, do an accident report, etc., all from inside the vehicle,” says Lieutenant Charles “Chuck” Bost. “It will provide better visibility, quicker response time and allow the officers in the field to move around better and have more contact with the citizens. People will see more officers out on patrol in the local neighborhoods of Magnolia Greens, Waterford, Brunswick Forest, etc.”
Initially, six police cars will be used to test LelandCONNECT. The cars will be wired with a “Pelican Case,” which is a portable rugged zed connectivity unit Opterex designed for use by the Leland Police Department. It contains the electronics necessary to tap into the LelandCONNECT system.
Another benefit of this new, faster, on-demand computer access is that it will help the Department of Building and Safety improve communications with its local building inspectors. While building inspectors currently have remote access through another service provider, they are looking to dramatically improve existing speed.
“We’re trying to take the speed that inspectors can get at their desktop with our existing network and allow them to get the same connection speed in the field,” says Frank Ramsey, Leland IT Manager.
The Leland Public Works Department may also benefit from this new technology.
“In the future I hope to have computers in the public work trucks so that when we have issues that need to be taken care of, we can send the work out to the employees in the field,” says Steve Spruill, Director of Public Works. “Our workers will be able to pull up on their computers maps or other documents that might help them while they are on the job. They will also be able to do their daily reports that way.”
The Public Utilities Department is another potential benefactor. Future benefits could include wireless water meters, which would be installed at each Leland residence. Periodically, water-usage data would be transmitted to the appropriate office, greatly reducing the manpower required to read individual meters. An added benefit is that it could alert the office to unusually high water usage such as an undetected leak. A service that would be helpful, for example, if a homeowner’s underground sprinkler system fitting suddenly came loose and discharged hundreds of gallons of water before it became visible to the naked eye.
LelandCONNECT will also provide an immediate benefit to the citizens of Leland — free WiFi in the vicinity of Town Hall, the library and the park. Similar to the WiFi “hot spot” that many fast-food restaurants and coffee shops offer, if you are within shouting distance of the Town Hall, the library or the park, you will be able to take out your laptop and surf away on the net during their normal operating hours.
While the free WiFi service is general access, the municipal, commercial and residential wireless services are encrypted. An “encrypted” transmission means that the information is scrambled before it is sent, then “unscrambled” by the intended receiver.
Aside from free WiFi at Town Hall, this new wireless “dome” can provide other benefits to Leland residents. At the wire-cutting ceremony, Opterex demonstrated a live traffic cam. The camera itself was positioned at the intersection of Route 17 and Olde Waterford Way. Attendees watched live traffic on the large monitor positioned just outside Town Hall. The existing camera is for demonstration purposes only and is not available to the public. However, it demonstrates some of the possible future applications for the wireless network. Cameras could be placed at various intersections around Leland, giving residents advance warning of traffic delays. Steve Spruill, Director of Public Works, also sees the potential for such cameras for surveillance of the Public Works yards.
While the long-term benefits of the new technology are promising, they will be implemented in stages. “We want to see if the technology can help us do our jobs more effectively — and be more cost effective than the technology we are using,” says Town Manager Bill Farris. “But even more than the dollars and cents, it is seeing what the impact of this technology will be on economic development. It used to be ‘Build water and sewers and they will come!’ Now maybe instead, it will be: ‘Build wireless, and they will come!’”
