In evolutionary terms, the city of Wauwatosa's decision to replace its T1 lines with a high-speed wireless network is comparable to the difference between the DynaTAC and the iPhone.

The Wisconsin city had been using leased lines to handle communications. The system was slow, didn't have the ability to handle high-bandwidth applications and made backing up data a pain – the city had to hire couriers to carry tapes between city hall and the police department in order to safely store vital data. The T1 lines were also expensive, costing the city more than $20,000 per year.

So when Wauwatosa landed an $80,000 Homeland Security grant to install a new video surveillance system, city leaders began to contemplate their options. If the city was already installing a wireless network to run its video cameras, why not use the opportunity to upgrade the rest of its infrastructure?

And that's how a Milwaukee suburb of 46,000 people got outfitted with a state-of-the-art wireless network used for video surveillance, communications, applications and data backup for city hall and the police department. What began as a plan to connect its new video surveillance system with wireless instead of fixed lines became a complete overhaul of the city's information technology infrastructure.

One year after the final pieces of the network were put in to place, the verdict is in: The city's new system is a resounding success.

"The reliability has been outstanding," says Tom Otzelberger, manager of information systems for the city of Wauwatosa. "We just don't have any problems. I had more problems with our old T1 lines and they're actually physically connected."

The new system "didn't have a hiccup" last February when the city was buried under a massive snowstorm that took down power lines, stranded motorists and left roads impassable, Otzelberger says.

The idea for the city's new system was spawned after Otzelberger realized it would cost too much money to run Ethernet out to the video cameras in its planned surveillance network, which would be used to monitor security at critical facilities such as the water department. Working with local communications vendor Baycom, Otzelberger decided to use wireless instead. From there, it wasn't much of a leap to expand the network to replace Wauwatosa's outdated and cumbersome T1 lines.

"The first thing that crossed my mind was why limit ourselves? It opened up opportunities, since once we put the network in place we wouldn't have the recurring costs we had with the T1 lines," Otzelberger says.

Working with Baycom and Motorola, Wauwatosa installed a high-speed point-to-point connection between city hall and the police department to handle the massive amount of traffic at the two locations. Cricket Communications paid for the cost of constructing a 100-foot tower at city hall, which it rents from the city for its own use.

The high-speed connection between city hall and the police department uses two 300 Mbps access points from Motorola Solutions, with one in active use and the other serving as backup. Motorola offers faster access points, including a 600 Mbps model used for mesh networks.

The cameras for the video surveillance network are outfitted with Motorola Solutions' 14 Mbps wireless modules and use point-to-multipoint technology to connect to the central hub.

The backhaul connections between city hall and the police department have a latency of about 2 milliseconds and can process 500,000 packets per second, says Motorola Solutions sales manager Tom Dobbertin.

"A lot of cities are looking for private networks, because they're looking for a product that's easy to install," Dobbertin says. "With this customer, it started as demand for video surveillance, but once they saw the flexibility of the solution, they decided to expand its capabilities."

Motorola Solutions recently decided to divest the business units that provided Wauwatosa's point-to-point and point-to-multipoint equipment, but the vendor continues to resell the gear to its customers.

Baycom rolled out the first phase of the project in 2008, installing the high-speed network between city hall and the police department and setting up video cameras at key areas throughout the city. The network uses proprietary cellular technology to thwart hackers.

From there, Baycom began work on the second phase of the project, replacing the city's T1 lines and ensuring the network was sufficiently redundant to withstand an outage at a link.

Now complete, the wireless network provides enough capacity to handle simultaneous data, voice and video services to employees at city hall and the police department. Despite the high volume of traffic coursing over the system, Otzelberger says the network is "not even close" to hitting its limit on bandwidth.

The network also runs the video surveillance system and provides a redundant storage and backup system for city data that syncs every 15 minutes – if a major disaster strikes and destroys one of the city's data centers, the worst that can happen is the loss of 15 minutes worth of information, since the municipality's entire operating environment and applications would switch over to the undamaged data center.

The new network marks a major technological advance for the city's information technology infrastructure. It's also cost efficient.

Rental revenue from the communications tower brings in more than $20,000 every year, and the city no longer has to pay for the T1 lines or the courier service, which cost a combined $28,000 per year.

Between more than $100,000 in grant money used to fund the project, cost savings and revenue from the tower rental, the city is projected to recoup much of its $272,000 investment by 2014.

Wauwatosa's bold foray into wireless technology has become an example for neighboring cities considering ways of upgrading their own information technology infrastructure.

"What they're doing is very innovative," says John Wisniewski, director of information technology for the city of Muskego. "It's something we'd like to do today as an organization."

For now, the cost of the technology is stopping Muskego from installing a similar system, but the Wisconsin town has begun to adopt wireless technology.

The city uses Verizon Wireless' network to communicate with its volunteer fire department, police officers and other public safety employees. Muskego also recently installed a private wireless network for the city council, which now uses the iPad to read the council's agenda and paperwork instead of the trove of documents cranked out by the city's printers.

Wauwatosa's wireless ambitions are far from over. The new system is easily scalable, and the city is already considering plans to add more video cameras to its surveillance network. Compared to most cities its size, Wauwatosa is far ahead of the curve.

"When we first went into this, we were kind of pioneering," Otzelberger says. "We took the plunge and it's been wonderful."