http://www.wirelessreview.com/ar/tel...akes_cerritos/
Aiirnet makes Cerritos Wi-Fi hot zone
By Dan O'Shea
TelephonyOnline.com, Dec 3 2003
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Wireless ISP Aiirnet Wireless said it has reached an agreement with the
Cerritos, Calif., city council to begin offering service on Jan. 1 through
an 8.6-square-mile Wi-Fi hot zone that will cover the entire southern
California community of 50,000 people.
The hot zone is based on 802.11 mesh technology provided by Tropos Networks,
with hot spot controller and back office functions supported by Pronto
Networks. The network leverages city-owned facilities for access point
deployment, and an initial demonstration zone of about 1.5 square miles
already has been activated, according to Aiirnet CEO Stan Hirschman.
"About 50% of this suburb has no DSL or cable modem capability. When the
service goes live on Jan. 1, every outdoor square inch of the city will be a
wireless access point," he said. The service provider also plans to deploy
transmitters to extend coverage into homes. The City of Cerritos municipal
government will be Aiirnet's primary customer, but the ISP also will work
with several local marketing partners to sell the service to individual
users.
Deployment of Wi-Fi hot zones and municipal coverage is suddenly
trendy--WinQ, Nomadix and Proxim touted a city-wide hot zone for Kenniswijk
Eindhoven in the Netherlands this week, and in Canada, the town of
Fredericton, New Brunswick, recently launched what is believed to be that
country's first comprehensive "muni" Wi-Fi network. Now, with the Cerritos
project, Aiirnet claims to be launching the single largest Wi-Fi network in
the U.S.
Hirshman said Aiirnet is confident the mesh architectures such as Tropos
Networks' Tropos Sphere NOS can cover even much larger areas, perhaps up to
"40 or 50 square miles."
The vendor's lightweight control protocol and Predictive Path Optimization
technology along with wireless backhaul will help Aiirnet grow and operate
the Cerritos network and other Wi-Fi hot zones with smooth scalability and
minimal maintenance expense, said John Leibling, chief technology officer at
Aiirnet Wireless.
Jasbir Singh, co-founder and CEO of Pronto Networks, said the Cerritos
deployment "will be almost like a cookie cutter for other communities to
follow in deploying Wi-Fi." After supplying back office systems for many
smaller, more traditional Wi-Fi hot spots, the large coverage area of a hot
zone presents a new challenge to the scalability of the authentication,
billing and other processes supported by Pronto. However, Singh said traffic
on the Cerritos network likely will build up gradually, rather than peak the
moment the network goes live.
"This is just the beginning, but Cerritos could start a pretty significant
trend where you think about supporting all kinds of other services over a
community Wi-Fi network," he said.
