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Searching for a wireless city: will we ever find wireless MAN infrastructures that work?

Article Excerpt
True wireless metro area networks (MANs) remain the holy grail of the wireless industry. Recently, vendors have been going after them again with a renewed Indiana Jones-esque intensity and even more marketing might.

Who will find the grail is still anyone's guess: the largest deployments to date are still relatively small--confined to small cities, rural areas, parts of cities, shipyards, hotels, and campuses, etc. Industry experts agree that until a true MAN is up and running (read: downtown San Francisco, Manhattan, Boston, etc.), it is impossible to tell if the claims being made by many of today's vendors will hold up to the rigors and unexpected challenges of a real deployment.

In order to achieve the goal of a truly wireless city, solutions must be able to provide reliable, scalable, anywhere, anytime access that can stand up to the demands inherent in metro area networks. With that in mind, several technologies are being touted as the future basis of a truly wireless city. Cellular, Wi-Fi, and WiMax are the front-runners and each has its proponents and detractors.

The fact is that none of the current options are complete solutions by themselves. What is needed is a new architecture that combines the best of Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and cellular to leapfrog the limitations of all current solutions.

Why Unwire Cities?

Until recently, wireless local area networks (WLANs) served small, primarily indoor applications. Today, WLANs are growing beyond the modest interconnection of several computers in an office or home setting and into the realm of vital telecommunications infrastructure, serving the needs of large enterprises and public applications.

Service providers are looking to wireless networks to extend the reach of existing infrastructures. Public and private enterprises are turning to wireless deployments as a means of facilitating productivity and providing untethered access for increasingly mobile workforces. Wireless networks have moved from "nice to have" to "must have" status for a majority of organizations.

This wireless evolution has changed the way wireless is perceived at the municipal level. Towns and cities are now looking at wireless networks as an essential part of their municipal infrastructures. A true metro wireless system can enhance and improve the delivery of essential services and make municipalities more competitive in their quest to attract and keep business. Broadband wireless networks can be used to:

* Improve essential services communication (e.g., police, fire, ambulance, traffic monitoring, and control)

* Support homeland security

* Help rejuvenate downtown cores

* Provide incentives for businesses to lease space

Designed properly, a metro wireless network can also provide public Internet access over the same infrastructure, further improving access to information and communication in urban centers....

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