Two weeks ago at the WCA International Symposium and Business Expo in San Jose, CA Earthlink announced that Motorola is their primary equipment partner for metro Wi-Fi developments. Motorola will provide engineering and integrations services, supply Canopy systems for backhaul, and use Tropos Networks equipment for the Wi-Fi Mesh.
While at WCA I interviewed Donald Berryman, President, Municipal Networks, Earthlink and Thomas Hulsebosch of Motorola about the announcement. Here are some notes from that interview:
- This will be the first time that Earthlink will own an access network (other than limited ownership of dialup facilities); previously they have partnered with network operators, and that's increasingly non-viable.
- Motorola will integrate an OEM version of Tropos MetroMesh for the Wi-Fi Mesh portion of the system, essentially repackaging it - no significant change from what Tropos supplies to other network builders.
- The Philadelphia Wi-Fi network will serve not just consumer Internet access, but also public safety and "SCADA" functions such as meter reading.
- The Philadelphia Wi-Fi network will be Open Access. Currently, Earthlink, AOL, and 5 local ISPs will offer service.
- In addition to Internet access, Earthlink will offer its trueVoice VOIP service on the Philadelphia Wi-Fi network.
- Earthlink's price for service on the Philadelphia Wi-Fi network will be approximately $20/month. Earthlink service will include relationships with Boingo and T-Mobile for roaming (not necessarily completely free), and limited dialup.
- Acccess speeds will be restricted to 1 Mbps.
- There will be 24 Wired/Wireless "Nexuses" (my term) where fiber bandwidth supplies 200 Mbps to a cluster of Canopy radios.
- Each cluster of Canopy radios will consist of 18 radios, operating at 900 MHz, 5.7 GHz, and 5.8 GHz.
- There will be 25-30 Wi-Fi nodes per square mile, a total of 4,000 Wi-Fi nodes.
- For Earthlink month-to-month customers, Earthlink will supply a Wi-Fi Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) - Wi-Fi client device with high-gain antenna, 200 mW power, built-in encryption and authentication.
By Steve Stroh
This article is Copyright © 2006 by Steve Stroh. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged.)
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