(JNi.media) The Ra’anana Municipality has begun a project to deploy fiber-optics throughout the city, DailyMaily reported Tuesday. Ra’anana Mayor Ze’ev Bielski announced that the city recently signed a $130,000 contract to this end with Mer group.
Bielski was the guest of honor at the municipal IT Conference 2015, at the Avenue convention center in Airport City, Israel. The conference was attended by hundreds of IT professionals from Israeli municipalities.
According to Bielski, “things are happening in Ra’anana. Right now we’re laying down the fiber-optic network throughout the city. We will complete the deployment in all our municipal institutions, they will all be in our network. This will allow, among other things, long distance learning, CCTV cameras and traffic light control. It will yield significant financial savings in communication costs and bring a quick return on our investment.”
Ra’anana, in the heart of the southern Sharon Valley in central Israel, boasts a population of 80,000, as of the 2014 census. Bordered by Kfar Saba on the east and Herzliya on the southwest, the city’s high tech industrial park, designated a “Green City” by the World Health Organization in 2005, is home to many leading global technology companies and local start up. A significant part of the Ra’anana population are immigrants from the Americas and Western Europe. Bielski has served as mayor from 1989-2005, and from 2013 to the present.
“Everybody’s talking all the time about computers and technology, but in the end there are people behind it,” said Bielski. “Our people, the municipal employees, are suffused with a sense of public mission, they bring about improvement in the quality of life at all levels. Everything depends on the people who run the city.”
A week or so ago, Israel, and especially the Sharon Valley communities, experienced one of the worst winter storms in recorded history, resulting in an area-wide blackout. The service interruption was made worse by an “Italian strike” of IEC union workers, which caused thousands of homes to remain dark for several days.
“We went through some difficult times in terms of power,” Bielski conceded, referring to the storm. “It was dark in the Sharon, it was very difficult, because it’s difficult to survive without electricity. The entire Ahuza Street (Ra’anana’s main drag) was dark and without traffic lights. But what was even more difficult was the fact that the electric company people wouldn’t talk to us. And so, I thought to myself, ‘one day we’ll have our own little electric company in this city.’ Ultimately, we are at the beginning of that process, in which the importance of the central government is decreasing, while the importance of local government is growing. The positive aspect of this is that in the end we can give a better service to our residents and save money.”
“In the not too distant future,” Bielski mused, “in only a few months, I will have in my office at City Hall my own computer which I will be able to use to direct traffic lights in Ra’anana. I’ll come in in the morning, turn on the computer after drinking my coffee, I’ll look at all the cameras, I’ll see all of Ra’anana. I’ll be able to fix the traffic lights as I see fit.” And he added with a smile, “I’ll be able to help all my friends who will ring me up to tell me they’re stuck in a traffic jam…”