5G Wireless announced today that it has begun beta testing Mobile Wi-Fi in the City of Garden Grove, California.
The Mobile Wi-Fi capability is an extension of 5G recently announced WiFi HotZone. 5G’s will provide coverage over a mile away using strategically placed repeaters. 5G claims it is possible to provide the entire fleet of police cars and emergency vehicles total coverage within the 7-square-mile city limits.
“Given the success of the City’s existing Wi-Fi network, which seamlessly connects City Hall, Courthouse, Public Works, Fire and Police Stations, the next logical step is to bring high-speed broadband to police cars and other emergency vehicles,” stated Brian Corty, Chief Technology Officer for 5G Wireless Communications.
“We’re in the field testing, mapping and demonstrating speeds upward of 1 Mbps, while traveling at 35 MPH and we are in the process of proving that the vehicle units would remain connected as they move between multiple 5G Access Points for seamless roaming capabilities,” stated Jerry Dix, President and CEO of 5G Wireless.
The 5G technology claims to be able to penetrate both manmade and natural obstacles while delivering speeds consistent with line-of-sight locations. The technical nature of the 5G system, based on 802.11b, is not explained in much detail on their web site.
They will have competition from other “city cloud” competitors:
- Tropos in Half Moon Bay, near San Francisco. Tropos has deployed 8 to 10 Wi-Fi hot spots. Two of the hot spots have land-line connections to carry the data to the Internet backbone, the rest use mesh-like interconnections. Tropos intends to target municipal users like police and fire departments.
- Tech Dirt reports NIST is developing a wireless LAN system that would let first responders exchange messages and data.
- Vivato’s outdoor Wi-Fi switch might also utilized in “city clouds” since it delivers 1 Mbps to ordinary Wi-Fi clients in PDAs and laptops, a mile or more away.
- Wi-Fi plans from Boingo, CoMeta, Verizon and T-Mobile are focused on providing individual services.
Turnkey community “hot spot” providers that could offer “city cloud” services include:
- Alvarion and Pronto’s hotspot gateway
- Colubris and Juniper
- Fatport’s Community gateway ($800)
- PCTEL’s Software Access Point
- Proxim Net Manager
- Soekris Community gateway
- Sputnick Community gateway ($180)
- Toshiba’s Community gateway ($199)
- Towerstream and Aperto
- ValuePoint Network’s HG-2000 hotspot gateway
- Vernier Networks
- Wireless Utility Pole Systems
Regional Wireless ISPs could conceivably provide turnkey municipal service packages:
- Broadband Central is building wireless networks in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington. Individuals within each “Blue Zone” can sign up with Broadband Central for month-to-month Internet access packages starting as low as $19.95 per month for synchronous connectivity at 128 kilobits per second (Kbps).
- National Broadband is rolling out a nation-wide wireless network along WilTel’s Fiber Routes. Wireless broadband services will be available to communities along the fiber network footprint.
City clouds might save money and deliver faster speeds than cellular. Portland, for example, currently spends over $500,000 on cellular phone services which provide ubiquitous service but slow internet speeds. That doesn’t count CDPD cellular data services which is used for relaying GPS positioning information, police data terminals, and parking meter machines. CDPD data services, using analog cellular service, will be shut down in the next year or two. That will require a move to GPRS (GSM) or 1XRTT (CDMA) data services.
Are city clouds based on 802.11a/b/g premature? An argument could be made that without a centralized polling mechanism, increasing interference and reduced throughput would result. Because there’s no standardized 802.11b method (yet) for polling, all clients must be “flashed” with a mechanism like KarlNet. So why not wait for the 802.16a/e standard? It has polling built-in. The 802.16 standard can use narrower channels on the same 2.4 and 5 GHz unlicensed spectrum (as well as licensed spectrum) and enables longer reach.
Roger Marks, head of the 802.16 standards group, says 802.16e has the capacity to be adapted for individual computers. “One of the reasons that might happen is that we have QOS support,” Marks said. “The nice thing about 802.16 is it can handle time sensitive information like voice. Intel has been very active in the process”.
Installing hundreds of Wi-Fi “hot spots” all over a city would be expensive and difficult to manage. Longer distance 802.16a/e, could be installed on cell towers and rooftops while phased array antennas (like Vivato’s) might cover large sections of a city at less cost. Roaming and handoff will be incorporated into the 802.16e standard and radio clients might be inexpensive. And interoperable. The 802.16a/e backbone could also feed ubiquitous Wi-Fi “hot spots”.
A package combining Sony’s $250 PSX with a $150 “last mile” device similar to the Linksys WET-54 Ethernet Bridge might offer VOD, games, voice and internet access for half the cost of DSL or Cable Modems - and with better upstream capacity.
Meanwhile Navini Networks and Korea Telecom, the world’s largest broadband service provider, has announced plans to trial a 2.3 GHz system in Seoul. Using Navini’s “smart antennas” and its new PCMCIA modem, KT’s trial participants will experience multi-megabit network speeds, a zero-install plug-and-play experience, and untethered wide-area wireless broadband access anywhere within the coverage area expected to be 3-5 miles. The field trial is being conducted in Seoul, starting in May 2003.
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