Tropos 5110 Outdoor Wi-Fi Cell

Bert Williams is the V.P. for Marketing at Tropos Networks, a company bent on "taking Wi-Fi out of the coffeeshop" and raising it to the "metro" level.

Mr. Williams spoke today with Broadband Wireless Access World about "metro" level Wi-Fi technology and how his company is providing wireless broadband access products to Verge Wireless Networks for constructing Wi-Fi "hot zones" in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana and in Pershing Square, in Los Angeles, California.

The deployment of a Wi-Fi hot zone in Downtown Los Angeles' Pershing Square by Verge with equipment from Tropos is part of a growing commitment by city government in the nation's second largest city to "extend fast and easy wireless Internet access to every Los Angeles resident."

Said Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn in a press release announcing the formation a "Broadband Executive Panel" to examine "what role broadband technologies can play in accelerating economic development in the city and how Wi-Fi and 'next generation' wireless technologies can be used to retain and attract businesses to Los Angeles," "I want Los Angeles to remain at the leading edge of innovation and creativity. We need wireless access to the Internet everywhere in the city—not just in select locations. I believe that Wi-Fi and 'next generation' technologies will help us bridge the digital divide."

In his Broadband Wireless Access World interview, Mr. Williams described how "mesh networks" implemented with Tropos hardware increase the proportion of wireless bandwidth available to carry customer transmissions, in relation to how much is needed to manage the network itself.

He also discussed how the systems built with his company's products are more capable than earlier implementations of Wi-Fi technology of receiving relatively weak upstream signals from dispersed Wi-Fi devices, thereby broadening the effective area that can be covered by the network's base stations and allowing for greater upstream bandwidth.

Once in place, according to Tropos' Williams, these Wi-Fi hot zones can support wireless Voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephone service, networks of police surveillance cameras, and even the upstream transmission of live video from individually-owned-and-operated digital camcorders, a capacity that, leaping ahead of that of current camera-equipped cell phones, could generate a "videoblogosphere," populated by numerous videobloggers capable of doing to cable and broadcast television what text-based bloggers are already doing to established media outlets in both the print and video spaces, namely, empowering a vast array of inputs beyond a select few corporate ones into the common informational space available to everyone.

Mr. Williams also mentioned a deployment of Tropos Wi-Fi cell technology in Chaska, Minnesota, a Twin Cities suburb. Broadband wireless access is now available there through the city-owned Chaska.net for $15.99 a month, considerably less than either cable modem or DSL service.

To listen to Bert Williams' Broadband Wireless Access World interview in its entirety, click here.

You can also read about a deployment of a Wi-Fi hot zone in another part of Los Angeles similar to the one by Verge powered by Tropos in Pershing Square and listen to what Aiirmesh CEO Tony Esfandiari has to say about this other installation and many of the same issues addressed in this article by Mr. Williams by clicking here.