Dec 6, 2005 6:13 PM, By Donny Jackson

Wake County, N.C., is transmitting video-surveillance information from three key venues in the county to headquarters and patrolling officers in what is the first announced deployment of the 4.9 GHz band using Motorola’s MotoMesh multiband radio solution.

Wake County is using the MotoMesh architecture—featuring two 2.4 GHz radios and two 4.9 GHz radios in each node—to provide video surveillance at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Center and Carter-Finley Stadium at North Carolina State University.

Several municipalities and counties have deployed the MotoMesh solution, but Wake County is the first to announce usage of the 4.9 GHz band—reserved for public-safety usage by the FCC—with it, said Peter Stanforth, vice president and director of technology for Motorola’s mesh networking products group.

Whether branded by Motorola or precursor MeshNetworks, the public entities deploying the mesh systems have used the broadband wireless networks for a wide variety of purposes.

“We’ve been surprised by the ingenuity that our customers have demonstrated; I suspect that no two networks have been used the same,” Stanforth said. “We basically give them a fairly fat pipe, and they can go nuts with it.”

Although MotoMesh would allow a governmental entity to provide high-speed Internet access to the general public using one of the 2.4 GHz radios in the system, Stanforth said no customer has opted to pursue that to date.

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