PITTSBURGH—US Wireless Online launched a Wi-Fi network in Pittsburgh in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership as well as the city of Pittsburgh. The network offers free and fee-based Internet access in the city’s central business district/Golden Triangle as well as in the North Shore neighborhood and the Lower Hill district.
Free access to the network offers speeds of about 512 Kbps, while fee-based packages of $7.99 per day, $14.99 per month or $119.99 per year receive access at speeds of 1 Mbps. The city said that within the next couple of months, complimentary connections will be provided in partnership with Wireless Neighborhoods, an alliance of community and faith organizations committed to supporting children’s education as well as the promotion of economic development.
Pittsburgh’s network is also providing the municipal benefits, including four public safety mobile-command units.
Tropos Networks Inc. supplied the Pittsburgh mesh network with more than 55 of its 5210 MetroMesh Wi-Fi routers, which are installed on light poles throughout the downtown area.
The company’s gear is also going up on light poles in other cities, such as Philadelphia, San Francisco and New Orleans as EarthLink Inc. prepares to launch Wi-Fi networks featuring equipment from Tropos and Motorola Inc.
Michael Edwards, president and chief executive of the PDP raved about Tropos’ mesh products, saying, “The attractive economics of the Tropos solution has allowed us, in partnership with US Wireless Online, to establish a network quickly and economically. Plus the Tropos technology gives us the flexibility and capability to deal with the environmental challenges presented by the hilly terrain of the area.”
Tropos recently unwired Google Inc.’s hometown of Mountain View, Calif., and announced today that it partnered with GigaBeam Corp. on the project, with GigaBeam’s wireless fiber product, WiFiber, providing backhaul throughout the mesh network.
Ron Sege, president and chief executive of Tropos commented that GigaBeam’s 1 WiFiber throughput, “substantially increases the capacity of a Wi-Fi mesh network, enabling service providers to deliver multi-megabit services and support bandwidth intensive applications for a very large number of subscribers on a metro scale.”
GigaBeam said it hopes to work with Tropos on more municipal Wi-Fi deployments, but said nothing has been agreed to as of yet.
GigaBeam has racked up WiFiber sales with Telkonet Inc.’s subsidiary Microwave Satellite Technologies Inc. in New York City. The network integrator used WiFiber to boost in-building wireless coverage as it expanded an ultra high-speed wireless loop network among several Manhattan skyscrapers. In addition, GigaBeam’s WiFiber is being used by the San Francisco’s Public Utility Commission’s citywide backhaul network, as well as in Manteca, Calif., about 75 miles east of San Francisco where WiFiber links provide communications between city buildings, security services and WiMAX applications being developed to bring high bandwidth wireless mobile access to city residents. In Sioux Falls, S.D., WiFiber is being installed as the city prepares to launch its municipal network.
