Has another town fallen in love with Wi-Fi networking? So it seems, as Tropos Networks recently announced it has added Malden, a staunchly small-town city 5 miles north of Boston, to its list of more than 200 municipal clients.
The City of Malden, population 53,884, will use Tropos’ MetroMesh architecture for a mobile municipal wireless network pilot project, helping city personnel and emergency management staff improve their services. Malden also says it will use the wireless mesh network to support the `Malden Wi-Fi’ community portal, giving residents with wireless devices immediate Internet access to the schools, police, fire department and any other city Web sites.
“We are among a handful of cities in Massachusetts to operationally leverage wireless technology for municipal use; this project takes it to the next level,” said Anthony Rodrigues, director of information technology for the City of Malden. “The mesh network will provide mobile users and first responders the ability to access critical city information and to communicate more effectively, especially during public emergencies.
“Coupled with our GIS system, municipal personnel will have the ability to access data in the field in real time. Information about permits, hazardous material locations, building floor plans and city infrastructures will be accessible so that public safety and municipal personnel can do their jobs in a safe and efficient way as they move about the city.”
Malden’s law enforcement agency also has plans for the Wi-Fi network, according to Ken Coye, Malden’s chief of police, who said, “We will benefit greatly with our laptops in the cruisers, cameras at high risk locations and connectivity to state and federal resources. We expect to develop community support for virtual crime watches at locations of concern. This system brings law enforcement and the neighborhoods closer than ever.”
Tropos says the municipality will use outdoor-optimized MetroMesh routers, which are fast, low-cost and easy to deploy. Rodrigues said he has installed the Tropos hardware on poles in 20 minutes.
Internet bandwidth is being provided by Pipeline Wireless, using a radio-frequency link from a transmitter on top of Malden’s City Hall to a transmitter on top of Boston’s John Hancock Building.
Tulsa, Okla., tells a similar story. Tropos announced in early July that Tulsa became Tropos’ 200th metro-scale Wi-Fi mesh network customer. Tropos picked up 75 new customers in the first half of 2005 and expects an additional 220 U.S. municipalities will install metro-scale Wi-Fi networks during the next 12 months.
“The Tulsa MetroNet installation shows again that metro-scale Wi-Fi mesh networks are proving themselves in an increasingly broad range of applications, for a larger group of customers and in larger geographic footprints. Our MetroMesh networks have evolved from supporting mobile public-safety applications to providing low-cost residential Internet access to enabling new applications such as municipals automation and low-cost calling via voice-over-Wi-Fi,” said Ron Sege, president and chief executive of Tropos.
