From hot spots to hot zones, Wi-Fi is spreading

Computerworld - Wi-Fi hot spots are starting to morph into Wi-Fi hot zones as local governments around the country adapt the technology to provide broadband service for mobile police and fire units, as well as wireless public Internet access over wide areas. Hot zones can now offer access in areas ranging from downtown cores to networks that blanket hundreds of square miles in a city or county.
Just yesterday, Spokane, Wash., turned on a Wi-Fi network designed to provide Internet access -- as well as broadband service to public safety units -- in a 100-block area of downtown. And the city of Rio Rancho, N.M., located 22 miles north of Albuquerque, plans to turn on the first phase of a dual-use public safety and Internet access network on Saturday. Once complete, it will eventually cover 103 square miles.
Besides providing needed service, officials in both Spokane and Rio Rancho view their Wi-Fi networks as key economic development tools at a time in which high-speed Internet access is considered a must for most businesses.
Cook County, Ill., which includes the city of Chicago, received funding and authorization last week for the first phase of a massive Wi-Fi-based public safety network that will eventually cover all 940 square miles of the county. It will provide mobile data service at speeds up to 54Mbit/sec. to public safety users in Chicago and 128 other towns and cities.
These three local government entities envision using a number of methods to provide the Wi-Fi access, including mesh networks, high-gain antennas or a combination of tall towers and an extensive fiber-optic backbone. The goal is to turn Wi-Fi, a technology designed for short-range communications of between 100 and 300 feet, into the building blocks of metropolitan-area or wide-area networks.
Joel Hobson, network services manager for the city of Spokane, said the downtown hot zone there is a mile long and a third of a mile wide and is covered by five 802.11b Wi-Fi base stations and high-gain antennas from San Francisco-based Vivato Inc. Vivato's research and development division is located in Spokane.
Hobson said the Vivato antennas, which used phased-array technology to electronically "steer" narrow beams to individual users, have a range of four miles.
Public safety users access the network through a VPN connection, and Spokane has equipped roughly 50 vehicles, primarily fire trucks with rugged mobile computers from locally based Itronix Corp., to access the network, Hobson said. Spokane eventually wants to equip between 1,000 and 1,250 police, fire and emergency services vehicles with Itronix computers.
Spokane