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EDINBURG — Visitors to three parks here may notice something new in the air starting this week — publicly accessible wireless internet that’s fast and free.
It’s part of a project to increase broadband internet access in a post-COVID-19 world and is being funded through federal pandemic relief dollars, according to the city’s information technology director.
“It’s pretty exciting,” Edinburg IT Director Daniel “Danny” Vera said after delivering an update on the project to the Edinburg City Council during a meeting Tuesday.
Edinburg Mayor Ramiro Garza Jr. agreed.
“I think this is a great project,” the mayor said after Vera’s presentation.
Beginning Wednesday, the city was set to begin broadcasting the free Wi-Fi signals at four different locations across the city:
>> EEDC – North Park, located along the southbound U.S. Highway 281 frontage road between East Rogers Road and Cullen Street.
>> South Park, located along East Palm Drive behind the Parks and Recreation Department building.
>> Janet Ogden Vacker Park located along Doolittle Road between Memorial Middle School and Eisenhower Elementary.
>> The exterior of the Dustin Michael Sekula Memorial Library, located at 1906 S. Closner Blvd.
The Wi-Fi signals will be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Each location will be able to accommodate connections from up to 500 devices at once, Vera said.
The IT director said city leaders first began thinking about the project during the height of the pandemic, when parents were suddenly thrust into the roles of educators and both students and their schools were forced to transition to online learning.
For many families, that proved to be a struggle since large portions of the Rio Grande Valley lack access to broadband internet service. Still other families couldn’t afford to pay for the internet even if they did live in a location with connectivity.
It’s something Vera thought of as his own kids learned from home.
“Being a parent and homeschooling my kids and hearing parents try to find free Wi-Fi brought up the idea of creating hotspots throughout the city to allow those parents to connect their students to their educational classes,” Vera said.
Edinburg will be offering the free broadband access, in part, using a portion of the city’s existing network.
“It’s just going through an existing guest (broadband) pipe that we had,” Vera said, speaking of the city’s internet service provider, Smartcom.
The Wi-Fi signals will be accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Each location will be able to accommodate connections from up to 500 devices at once, Vera said.
Expanding the network to include the four locations came at a cost of $394,000, all of which was paid for via a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant program.
The program allows local communities to fund investments in public broadband infrastructure.
It’ll cost Edinburg about $16,000 per year to maintain the service, though the first year’s maintenance is free, Vera said.
And already, city leaders are looking to expand the program to more of the city’s 17 public parks.
It’s something Vera said he plans to propose as part of the city’s upcoming fiscal budget workshops.
“As you saw in the presentation, it doesn’t take too many radios to equip a park,” he said.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the cost of maintenance.
