Motorola announces first mesh deployment
Motorola today announced that the city of Buffalo, Minn., has accepted its mesh network, the first such acceptance since Motorola completed the purchase of MeshNetworks earlier this year.
In September, MeshNetworks’ partner Scientel America won the Buffalo contract to install a high-speed data networks in the 2.4 GHz band for all of the city’s agencies, said Rick Rotondo, a former MeshNetworks executive who is now a director of marketing at Motorola. Installed in October and November, the 13-square-mile network has survived temperatures as low as minus-43 degrees in tests.
Although Motorola bought MeshNetworks during this time period, progress on the network was not hampered by the news, Rotondo said.
“I don’t think anything did change, and I think that was a pretty positive statement,” Rotondo said. “It’s just as if Scientel had Motorola equipment to [Buffalo] from the beginning, with all of the support benefits that come with that … I think it’s a big advantage to all our customers.”
Like other MeshNetworks deployments, the Buffalo data network can provide 2 MB/s upstream and downstream speeds at each of the 20 access points included in the 100-node network—even to vehicles traveling at high speeds on a highway, Rotondo said.
Having a high-speed network has enabled several new applications in Buffalo, including automated ticketing for traffic violations with a swipe of the driver’s license to an e-mail-driven pothole-repair program, he said. Buffalo city administrator Merton Auger expressed his happiness with the system in a Feb. 17 e-mail to Motorola.
“This, to me, is ‘holy grail’ type of stuff. I am impressed!” Auger wrote. “This opens a whole new world of doing business for us.”
Buffalo’s acceptance of the network represents Motorola’s first revenue from the MeshNetworks deal. It certainly will not be the last, Rotondo said.
“Since we’ve come on board, Motorola has taken the attitude of, ‘Let’s mesh everything,’ so we’ve been talking to everyone in the company, from the enterprise group to the consumer group,” Rotondo said. “I’ve been part of a startup that was purchased only to realize very quickly that the officials for the company that bought us really didn’t understand why we were bought. That’s not the case here. [Motorola officials] know exactly why they bought us, and they know exactly what they want to do with us.”