Location-Aware Ad Networks Extend the Value of Metro Wi-Fi

In spite of the hype around advertising-supported access for many providers, revenue from advertising has not been a reality for most Wi-Fi providers - until now. Why? Traditional online advertising is based on high volumes of ad impressions paid at a low cost per unit (counted in CPM or cost per thousand). Although the demographics of Wi-Fi users are especially attractive to advertisers because of higher than average income brackets, mobility of the user and familiarity with technology, the average number of impressions available over any Wi-Fi Network today is not large enough to support a full ad campaign. Advertisers don’t recognize Wi-Fi as a viable platform that can provide measurable ROI. Additionally, without location targeting traditional ad campaigns do not generate sufficient revenue to support a free access/advertising supported business model. However, a new concept, Location-Aware Advertising, is delivering the ROI advertisers seek and that Wi-Fi providers must provide.

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The views expressed in this Guest Commentary are those of its author and are not necessarily reflective of Tropos Networks. Tropos Networks, its partners and customers are not responsible for the third-party Guest Commentary content.

Philadelphia Achieves Key Milestone, Moves Forward

Philadelphia’s metro-scale Wi-Fi network has taken a giant step forward with the announcement that Wireless Philadelphia, the non-profit created by the City of Philadelphia to make high-speed Internet access more available and affordable, has approved test results from EarthLink’s 15-square-mile Wi-Fi Proof of Concept (POC) network. As a result, EarthLink will continue building the 135 square mile Wi-Fi mesh network. The network is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2007.

Access to EarthLink’s Wi-Fi network is currently available within the POC area, which extends east of the Schuylkill River and north of the Vine Street Expressway. EarthLink is offering a promotional rate of $6.95 a month for six months of 1 Mbps download and upload service as well as hourly and day rate plans. Free Wi-Fi access is available in designated areas throughout Philadelphia, including Norris Square, Love Park, the Historic District, and Capitolo Playground in South Philly. According to Don Berryman, president, EarthLink Municipal Networks, nearly 300,000 households and businesses will have access to the EarthLink network by the end of May.

For additional coverage of the POC approval, see these articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Wireless Week, and WPVI TV, the local ABC affiliate.

Savannah, Georgia, Keeps an Eye on Crime Using Metro Wi-Fi

Police can’t be everywhere at all times yet public safety is a high priority for most cities. So…how do you increase police presence without adding additional feet on the street?

Savannah Police Department faced exactly this challenge. In particular, they wanted the ability to better patrol the Riverfront area, especially during their annual Saint Patrick’s Day Festival – the second largest such celebration in the country. The event attracted a record one million people during the weekend event this year!

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We Have a Winner!!!

Texas Rangers game ticket: $55. Parking at the Rangers Ballpark: $12. Hot dog and beer during the game: $9. Watching the game live just outside the park using citywide Wi-Fi: Priceless.

With a photo taken outside the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington showing the Texas Rangers baseball game being played inside on his laptop screen, Varun Narula of Fort Worth, Texas, was voted the winner of our “Coolest Use of Citywide Wi-Fi Photo Contest.” Narula’s photo received 1,642 votes, 13 more than the entry from runner-up Jerrell Lance of Columbia, MD, showing a woman surfing the Internet from the branches of a tree.

Entrants were asked to submit an original photo that best depicts a “unique and cool way to use citywide Wi-Fi.” Narula, who as one of 12 finalists already won a Sony mylo™ personal communicator, has won an Apple 17” MacBook Pro computer with AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi and Final Cut Express HD video editing software.

Revolutionizing Traffic Control in Edmonton

Edmonton, Alberta, faces transportation problems familiar to most large cities: growing population, suburban sprawl and road congestion. Most people still drive to work – one person to a vehicle. Bus ridership has increased recently – over the past five years, Edmonton Transit System (ETS) ridership has grown faster than the city’s population – up 14 per cent compared with a population growth of 8 per cent but it is still only a small portion of daily commuters.

Traffic Signal Priority (TSP) has been proven in numerous instances to reduce delays, contributing to faster travel and reduced operating costs per passenger. It also helps promote greater use of public transit. With those goals in mind, the ETS recently commissioned a trial project for traffic signal priority along one of its busiest commuter corridors. ETS chose TransPOD™ (Transit Priority on Demand), developed by Novax Industries of New Westminster, BC, because it meets or exceeds all ETS requirements, including a requirement to deploy municipal Wi-Fi. For this TSP installation, Novax deployed a Tropos® MetroMesh™ network to provide the communications layer for different components of the system.

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Tropos Wins More Customers

Tropos Networks continued its customer momentum with a number of recent wins, including:

• The City of Las Vegas, New Mexico, which is deploying a Tropos MetroMesh Wi-Fi system to provide mobile wireless connectivity for the Las Vegas Police Department. Read more…
• The City of Redwood City, California, who used a Tropos MetroMesh networks and the LUKE pay station from Digital Payment Technologies to a wireless parking meter system in Redwood City’s downtown core. Read more…
• Historic Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles, which has gone live with a community Wi-Fi mesh network for free Internet access and content distribution. Read more…
• Amory, Mississippi, which is receiving the first metro-scale Wi-Fi network whose construction and operation is entirely funded by a private foundation. Read more…
• The Lafayette (Louisiana) Utilities System, which deploying a MetroMesh network to enable mobile utility workers to operate more efficiently, reduce cost and improve customer experience for citywide services such as electric, water, wastewater, telecommunications and other wholesale services. Read more…

WiMAX Myth Shattered

The myth that a single WiMAX base station can deliver broadband coverage over a 30 mile radius is shattered in a new Tropos white paper, “Picocell Mesh: Bringing Low Cost Coverage, Capacity and Symmetry to Mobile WiMAX.”

“Our analysis is conclusive,” said Narasimha Chari, Chief Architect for Tropos Networks. “Picocells are essential in providing high-speed uplinks and uniform coverage needed for true mobile broadband, no matter what type of wireless technology is used in the network. We are excited to add mobile WiMAX to our ongoing development of industry-leading metro-scale Wi-Fi systems.”

Tropos’s analysis shows that a picocell system with 20+ nodes per square mile operating in bands above 2 GHz will provide mobile WiMAX performance of greater than 1 Mbps throughput on more than 90% of client uplinks. Such symmetrical broadband performance significantly enhances both traditional Internet applications, such as sending e-mail with large attachments, and emerging Web 2.0 applications, such as uploading high-resolution photos and videos to social networking sites. In contrast, the analysis determined that, with traditional macrocell networks, WiMAX supports greater than 1 Mbps throughput on less than 25% of client uplinks.

Tropos Innovations Deliver High-value for Customers

Tropos Networks continued its tradition of delivering high-value, innovative solutions with a series of recent new technology and product announcements, including:

• The Spectrum and Application Based Routing Engine (SABRE), a dynamic, policy-based multi-band mesh routing capability that adds capacity and reliability for service level assurance. SABRE is the first mesh software that enables intelligent integration of parallel network operation across multiple frequency bands and radio types. SABRE provides rule-based traffic segmentation, carrying traffic for different applications on different spectrum and radios while supporting dynamic fault tolerance in the event of link congestion or failure. Read more…
• Tropos Insight 2.0 with the Correlated Mesh Data Protocol (CMDP™), which adds sophisticated new business analytics to Tropos Insight MetroMesh analysis and optimization system. With Tropos Insight 2.0, service providers and municipalities have, for the first time, vital business statistics collected at the very edge of the mesh network. The business analytics used by Tropos Insight 2.0 are derived from statistics gathered from each router in the citywide mesh. Uniquely, the collected data is pre-processed on each mesh router using Tropos’ patented Correlated Mesh Data Protocol (CMDP™), ensuring minimal airtime usage during transfer over the network. Read more…
• The Tropos 9000 family of 4.9 GHz-equipped MetroMesh routers for the public safety market. The new product family is the first to provide policy-based routing for multi-band metro-scale wireless mesh networks that employ the 4.9 GHz frequency band for public safety use. The Tropos 9000 family uses the innovative SABRE policy routing to provide fault-tolerant 4.9 GHz network connections. Read more…
• MetroMesh OS 6 featuring the new Mesh Edge Service Management (MESM™), BGP routing and pre-configured operating templates. MESM provides network operators with the means to exercise control, detect threats and enforce policies at the very edge of the mesh network. As a result, carriers can efficiently manage their wireless mesh networks and can create new revenue generating services. Read more…
• MetroMesh NG, the world’s first meshed multi-protocol picocell system. The new system leverages the patented Tropos MetroMesh OS, including the Spectrum and Application Based Routing Engine (SABRE™), to provide the low-cost, uniform coverage, symmetrical bandwidth and high capacity required to meet the needs of Mobile Internet devices. With MetroMesh NG, customers can deploy low-cost picocells on lampposts using multiple radio protocols – for example mobile WiMAX, Wi-Fi and/or 4.9 MHz – to deliver mobile Internet services to subscribers. These picocells are cost-effectively meshed and backhauled using these radio types in licensed and/or unlicensed spectrum. Read more…
• Tropos Metro Compatible Extensions Version 2 (TMCX v2), a new edition of its groundbreaking TMCX specification. TMCX v2 improves mobile and embedded Wi-Fi client performance when the clients connect to metro-scale Wi-Fi networks. Read more…

Tropos Expands Executive Team

Tropos Networks has continued to strengthen its executive team, adding new sales and finance vice presidents.

• John Shelnutt joined Tropos as the Vice President of Worldwide Sales. John is well-known in the carrier world, having secured DSL equipment contracts with the Joint Procurement Consortium valued at more than $5 billion for Alcatel. John was key to establishing DSL in the market and served on the Board of the DSL Forum. Earlier in his career, John also sold into the U.S. municipal government market. This combination of experience and success makes him a perfect fit for Tropos. Steve Lowe, our Vice President of North American Sales, and Chris Rittler, our Vice President of Carrier Sales and Business Development, will report to John. Read more…
• Bill Slakey joined Tropos as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Bill brings more than 20 years of experience strengthening company and financial operations and building relationships with Wall Street. He has held senior financial positions for leading public and private technology firms, including Extreme Networks, Handspring, Inc., WJ Communications, SnapTrack, Inc, Palm Computing, 3Com Corporation, and Apple Computer. Mike Taylor, our Vice President of Legal and Financial Planning, will report to Bill. Read more…

WiMAX World
Chicago, IL
September 25-27

Click here to view the issue #9 from December 2005.

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Click here to view the issue #12 from May 2006.

Click here to view the issue #13 from January 2007.