SAN MATEO, Calif. –(Business Wire)– May 25, 2004 Chaska.net, The City-Owned ISP, is Quickly Deploying Ubiquitous Wireless Broadband Service to Residents, Businesses, Public Safety, and Municipal Workers. Tropos Networks, a 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, is using Tropos equipment to deploy a Wi-Fi mesh network across the entire 16 square miles of the city. The network will provide users with ubiquitous broadband (1 Mbps symmetrical) coverage and unlimited mobility anywhere within the city limits. The first phase of the network deployment, consisting of 50 Tropos Wi-Fi cells, covering more than four square miles, was installed and in the test phase in less than two weeks.
“After carefully evaluating the technology options for this type of installation, we determined that the Tropos solution was simply without peer,” said Bradley Mayer, IS Manager for chaska.net. “The Tropos product allows us to offer exceptional services to the people of Chaska at, by far, the lowest total cost of operation and of capital. The network is incredibly simple to design and install, and allows us to bring our wireless broadband service to market in a very short timeframe. With our goal of complete network coverage by July 1st, we needed a partner with the ‘fast, low cost and simple’ metro-scale deployment experience that Tropos has established.”
“The technology leadership championed by Chaska is a great example of how city services can quickly add true value to the community,” said Ron Sege, President and CEO of Tropos Networks. “We are very proud that our unique technology has helped to enable chaska.net deliver this innovative service to the people of Chaska, quickly, at low-cost and at large scale.”
Chaska.net, formed five years ago to provide broadband services to the educational institutions of Chaska, worked closely with the City Council and City Manager in developing the wireless broadband initiative. Chaska.net plans to offer the 18,000 residents and 7,500 households of the city with high-speed access for the nominal fee of $15.99/month. In addition, chaska.net will provide in-vehicle broadband services to the officers of the Chaska Police Department; this service will provide field officers access to rich content, headquarters-quality applications previously unavailable outside of the precinct. The municipal workers of Chaska, such as building inspectors and public works employees, will also be equipped with Wi-Fi enabled devices such as laptop computers and PDAs. The end result will be a city workforce with unprecedented access to critical information in the field, increasing productivity and making the community safer as a whole.
In the planning and installation of the metro-scale Wi-Fi network, chaska.net worked closely with Twin Cities based First Mile Wireless, a leading reseller and integrator of wireless network solutions. For more than two years, First Mile Wireless has provided consultation, RF engineering, and support services for the growing chaska.net point-to-multipoint fixed wireless network services. This partnership has helped chaska.net become the technology leader in the Twin Cities wireless ISP market.
The city-wide chaska.net network will employ 200 Tropos 5110 Wi-Fi cells, an outdoor-optimized and ruggedized node 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. Chaska.net will use a combination of city fiber and fixed point-to-multipoint wireless technology for its backhaul connections.
About Tropos Networks, Inc.
Tropos Networks, Inc. is a 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(TM), Tropos solutions deliver maximum bandwidth to the user regardless of conditions, at unprecedented Wi-Fi network scale. Tropos Networks is headquartered in San Mateo, California. For more information, please visit http://www.tropos.com, call 650-286-4250 or write to info@tropos.com.
Tropos Networks and Tropos are trademarks of Tropos Networks, Inc. All other brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holder(s).
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.
About First Mile Wireless, Inc.
First Mile Wireless is a Twin Cities based value added reseller and integrator of wireless network solutions. The company provides turn key wireless and microwave solutions for Wireless ISP’s and private wireless network applications. Solutions focus on point-to-point, fixed multipoint, mesh, and limited non-line-of-site technologies in the license-free 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands. For more information on First Mile Wireless, visit their Web site at http://www.firstmilewireless.com.
CLS Communications, Inc.
Scott Green, 650-679-9044
teamgreen@rcn.com