 |
TROPOS
NETWORKS UNVEILS FIRST CELLULAR WI-FI SYSTEM TO PROVIDE UBIQUITOUS
METRO-SCALE BROADBAND WIRELESS DATA COVERAGE |
|
| |
Half
Moon Bay Among Commercial Wireless Hot Zone Deployments
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
SAN MATEO, CA, May 21, 2003
Tropos Networks™, Inc., formerly FHP Wireless,
Inc., today announced the first broadband cellular Wi-Fi mesh
networking system. Tropos’ new technology, products and
services enable ubiquitous, metro-scale, broadband, wireless
data coverage for carriers, network operators, service providers
and government departments. Tropos’ cellular Wi-Fi overcomes
what were, until now, the scalability, reliability and economic
limitations that prevented metro-scale deployment of Wi-Fi technology.
|
|
|
| |
Underscoring the company’s breakthrough,
Tropos has commercially deployed the new system for several
municipal public safety agencies and service providers, including
Coastside Net, headquartered in Half Moon Bay, California. Tropos
Networks also announced today that its products are currently
being used by Coastside to provide wireless hot zone service
across downtown Half Moon Bay. An extension of the hot zone
is planned to support the community’s harbor area. |
|
|
| |
“To date, Wi-Fi has been limited to
home and office access point deployments, which are more analogous
to cordless telephones than to true wireless data, and to public
access hot spots, which are similar to pay phones in the telephony
world,” said Dave Hanna, Chairman and CEO of Tropos. “Wi-Fi’s
real potential is true broadband wireless data access with anytime,
anywhere availability in coverage areas similar to those of
cellular telephone service. Tropos’ cellular Wi- Fi is
the first system that can deliver on Wi-Fi’s promise.”
|
|
|
| |
“Prior to the Tropos cellular Wi-Fi
system, hot zone deployment was prohibitively expensive and
logistically impractical. Now, we are able to offer new, cutting
edge roaming services, with the system essentially paying for
itself in less than four months, compared to the overall costs
of implementing the same coverage area, with comparable performance,
using traditional access points,” said Eric Gotfrid, Director
of Operations at Coastside Net. “In addition to solving
a technical problem, the Tropos system gives us a new way to
create revenue while reducing costs and increasing customer
satisfaction.” |
|
| |
| |
Coastside’s Hot Zone Service
in Half Moon Bay
Coastside placed Tropos’ cellular Wi-Fi equipment in strategic
locations to form a seamless coverage area over downtown Half
Moon Bay. Connected to Coastside’s authentication and
billing system, the wireless hot zone enables residents and
tourists to access the Internet from anywhere downtown, as long
as they have a client device equipped with a standard Wi-Fi
network connection. |
|
|
| |
If Coastside had tried to use access points,
it would have been required to deploy wired backhaul, such as
T-1 lines, at every unit. With the Tropos wireless backhaul
system, Wi-Fi cells require limited wired connectivity because
they communicate wirelessly with each other while providing
Wi-Fi coverage for clients. As a result, Coastside is able to
bring in new revenue while realizing savings on operational
costs, yielding an estimated return on investment of over 300%
annually when compared to a system deployed with access points.
Plus, it has a system that can easily expand to larger coverage
areas and reliably and securely serve its customers. |
|
| |
| |
Distributed Software Intelligence
Key to Metro-Scale Ubiquity and Reliability
Tropos’ products transform Wi-Fi into a scalable, reliable
infrastructure by layering intelligence on top of Wi-Fi to create
a new class of products, Wi-Fi cells. Wi-Fi cells self-organize
and, using wireless backhaul, forward data to each other along
the optimal path to a wired network connection. Tropos’
system uniquely enables economical, metro-scale Wi-Fi by eliminating
the need for each Wi-Fi node to have a wired connection. |
|
|
| |
The key intelligence is provided by Tropos
Sphere™, a network operating system (NOS) embedded in
each Wi-Fi cell. Tropos Sphere enables a self-organizing, self-healing
and truly wireless broadband data network – free from
the costly per-node wired connectivity of access points, the
unreliability and coverage gaps of interference-prone smart
antenna systems, and the high overhead of non-standard, peer-to-peer
client mesh networks. |
|
|
| |
Tropos Sphere, running on each Wi-Fi cell,
provides layer 3 intelligence that enables system coverage to
scale and optimizes wireless network performance and reliability.
Upon Wi-Fi cell installation, Tropos Sphere automatically establishes
communication among the cells. They self-organize into a cellular
mesh network in which each Wi-Fi cell chooses its optimal wireless
path back to a wired connection. As new cells are added, auto-discovery
and optimal path selection seamlessly integrate them into the
network. |
|
|
| |
Because wireless transmission characteristics
vary over time, Tropos Sphere continuously monitors the wireless
environment and dynamically tunes network settings to ensure
optimal path quality to each Wi-Fi cell. These adaptive capabilities
also make the network reliable and self-healing. If a link fails
anywhere in the network, Tropos Sphere quickly isolates the
outage and uses alternate paths to maintain connectivity. |
|
|
| |
The Tropos system permits seamless scaling
of network capacity. Aggregate capacity can be expanded by
simply connecting more wired backhaul links anywhere in the
network. Tropos Sphere automatically recognizes the new links
and dynamically reconfigures the network to distribute the
additional capacity throughout the network. |
|
| |
| |
Complete Solution with Products and
Services
Tropos Networks provides a complete line of products and services
for deploying and maintaining metro-scale Wi-Fi networks. Tropos’
products and services include: |
|
| |
|
|
| |
- The Tropos 3110 indoor Wi-Fi cell, including Tropos Sphere
- The Tropos 5110 outdoor Wi-Fi cell, including Tropos
Sphere
- Tropos Control™, a network management system optimized
for cellular Wi-Fi networks that monitors and reports on
the status of the network down to each individual wireless
link
- Professional site survey, design and deployment services
- 24x7 technical support center, manned live, around the
clock, for phone and e-mail support plus advance hardware
replacement and software updates
|
|
| |
Price and Availability
The Tropos cellular Wi-Fi system, service and support options
are available now through Tropos Networks and are priced on
a solution basis. The typical system cost is from $20,000 to
$50,000 per square mile, depending on the geography and RF environment.
|
|
| |
| |
