City reports technology upgrades continuing in 2015

Internet phones and more WiFi. Monday, City Council got a progress report on the city’s technology improvements. Council signed off on a major technology upgrade for offices and the city at large in 2012. Three years later, the move is yielding big changes and even bigger savings are expected.

In today’s special city council meeting, the information technology department presented the latest on its capital improvements, including revamping the city’s internal phone system and providing greater access to wireless internet for everyone at city facilities.

The city now has 63 miles of city-owned fiber optic cable allowing the city to run and manage it’s own voice-over-IP phone system. That conversion process is 54 percent complete and the city expects to change over 2000 phones in 22 locations in 2015.

And the savings for this part of the project? Estimated at over $1 million a year.

Another major component is the expansion of public WiFi across the city, which has seen over a thousand percent growth in bandwidth since the start of this effort.

“Our large focus as we undertake some of these improvements and upgrades throughout the city is really focusing on the libraries and parks and rec. facilities,” said Enrique Martinez, director of information technology. “Those which serve our constituents and are highly utilized by the youth and just our day-to-day citizens. We’ve improved some wireless connectivity. Right now, statistics measure that we’re averaging about 143,000 users a month on our Digital El Paso service.”

The city is looking to expand that capability and coverage even more in the future.

Another project the city’s I.T. department is working on? Tele-presence and web conferencing. Both for bringing in outside experts without the expense of getting here and even for having city council members remotely connect into council meetings in the future.