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CHASKA.NET
GOES LIVE WITH TROPOS METRO-SCALE WI-FI NETWORK AND QUICKLY
SEES EXPLOSIVE SUBSCRIBER GROWTH |
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20% of the City’s Households Have Already Pre-Subscribed
to the $15.99/Month Ubiquitous Wi-Fi Service Based on Tropos
Networks Equipment |
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CHASKA, MN, July 15, 2004
Tropos Networks, the leading supplier of equipment used to build
metro-scale Wi-Fi networks, today announced that chaska.net,
a wireless internet service provider (WISP) owned and operated
by the City of Chaska, Minnesota, has gone live with it’s
metro-scale Wi-Fi network completely covering the 16 square
mile footprint of the community. The wireless broadband network,
delivering symmetric data rates of 1-3 Mbps throughout the city
with unlimited mobility, has proven to be a very attractive
alternative to existing cable, DSL and dial-up services for
the residents of the city. |
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Chaska.net started marketing its service
and accepting pre-subscriptions just four weeks ago. In that
short timeframe, chaska.net has seen a 20% take rate, with more
than 1,500 subscriptions out of 7,500 homes. By eliminating
truck rolls, expensive CPE equipment and costly wired backhaul,
the metro-scale Wi-Fi solution from Tropos allows chaska.net
to offer enhanced broadband services at a fraction of the cost
of the service plans available from the existing cable and DSL
providers. The price point of $15.99 per month with unlimited
mobility throughout the city has made the service economically
alluring for Chaska residents. |
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“We are very pleased with the community
response to our metro-scale Wi-Fi offering,” said Bradley
Mayer, IS Manager for chaska.net. “The demand for the
service has far surpassed our most optimistic projections. The
goal of chaska.net is to create a valuable community resource
for our residents. The attractive economics of the Tropos solution
has allowed us to do that very quickly and economically.”
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In addition to the economic advantages of
the service, subscribers stay connected to the community via
a specially created chaska.net home page. This community resource
highlights current city events and special promotions of local
merchants and organizations. |
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“Chaska.net is great,” said Peggy
Hatfield, a chaska.net subscriber who has tried dial-up and
cable services in the past year. “Dial-up was entirely
too slow, and tied up my phone line, and I hated paying the
price of broadband service. But with chaska.net I’m getting
true broadband speeds for a dial-up price! Setup was very easy,
and I was online in a matter of minutes. This service is a great
way for me to stay connected with the community.” |
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The city-wide chaska.net network utilizes
186 Tropos 5110 Wi-Fi cells, an outdoor-optimized and ruggedized
wireless mesh router based on the 802.11 standard. The Tropos
5110 quickly and economically uses the intelligent Tropos Predictive
Wireless Routing Protocol (PWRP) to provide pervasive coverage
over metro areas. The Tropos PWRP routes traffic wirelessly,
eliminating up to 95% of the wired backhaul associated with
traditional access point solutions. Tropos Wi-Fi cells form
a wireless mesh, dynamically routing traffic along the highest
throughput path to a wired gateway. This intelligent routing
negates effects of radio frequency (RF) interference, wired
backhaul failure and node failure. PWRP also scales to thousands
of nodes with the lowest routing overhead in the industry. To
further minimize costs, Chaska.net uses a combination of city
fiber and fixed point-to-multipoint wireless technology for
its backhaul connections. Network support costs are minimized
via the central management capabilities of the Tropos Control
Element Manager, a configuration, monitoring and maintenance
tool. |
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About Tropos Networks
Tropos Networks, Inc., is the leading supplier of systems used
to build metro-scale, outdoor Wi-Fi networks. Tropos’
unique Wi-Fi cells, along with the first element manager to
control large Wi-Fi networks, enable public agencies and service
providers to deliver ubiquitous, city-wide mobile broadband
to users in any locale. These carrier-class IP networks are
low cost and easy to install and scale. The Tropos cellular
mesh architecture and use of optimized open-standard radios
dramatically reduce the need for wired backhaul while eliminating
expensive proprietary clients and complex software. Using the
patented Predictive Wireless Routing Protocol, Tropos solutions
deliver maximum bandwidth to the user regardless of conditions,
at unprecedented Wi-Fi network scale. Tropos Networks is headquartered
in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, please visit
www.tropos.com,
call 408-331-6800 or write to info@tropos.com. |
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Tropos Networks, Tropos and PWRP are trademarks
of Tropos Networks, Inc. All other brand or product names are
trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holder(s). |
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About chaska.net
Chaska.net is a Wireless Internet Provider (WISP) owned and
operated by the City of Chaska; providing wireless Internet
services to residential and business users in Chaska and other
Caver County, MN areas. |
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