Apr 1, 2006 12:00 PM, Donny Jackson

Motorola announced that the city of Plano, Texas, would deploy its MotoMesh and Canopy backhaul solutions to establish a “mobility corridor” that is designed to provide 4.9 GHz wireless broadband connectivity to first responders.

Within the mobility corridor, public-safety vehicles and even private ambulances in transit to key facilities in the city — hospitals, city hall, court buildings, and police and fire stations — will be able to access the large 4.9 GHz broadband network, said Rick Rotondo, director of marketing for Motorola's mesh-networks product group.

“They're going to be able to [access], videos, actual pictures of a wound, two-way video conferences while they're transporting someone,” Rotondo said. “They really want this [network] to make life-and-death differences for people in critical condition.”

Already the largest announced 4.9 GHz deployment for MotoMesh, Plano ultimately plans to make the 4.9 GHz citywide — something that the MotoMesh architecture is flexible enough to support, Rotondo said.

“Basically, what they're doing is setting up a bunch of 4.9 GHz hot spots in this first phase,” he said. “In the second phase, they're going to be filling in the gaps between those to create a 4.9 GHz mesh throughout the city.

Eventually, Plano plans to equip all its police vehicles with 4.9 GHz modems. As with all MotoMesh deployments, the city can decide later to deploy the 2.4 GHz radios included in each node of the solution, Rotondo said.

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