Wireless broadband vendor Alvarion Ltd. says Business Information Group (BIG) of York, Penn., is installing a series of countywide wireless broadband networks in Maryland using Alvarion point-to-multipoint solutions.
The deployments are occurring in concert with the latest generation of Maryland Public Libraries' Sailor Project, which connects libraries statewide into a common private network. In this generation of Sailor, a wireless backbone infrastructure that is being installed by BIG, delivers 100mbps of capacity to each connected county. Each participating county then provides the funds to extend the infrastructure from the backbone location to various public agencies with the use of last-mile wireless broadband systems that will replace costly leased line methods.
Counties taking advantage of the Sailor network will leverage Alvarion's BreezeACCESS solution, which is used to access the new Sailor backbone free of charge, in exchange for hosting Sailor backbone equipment and antennas at county-owned radio towers. In addition, some counties have elected to extend the network to connect public safety vehicles for mobile access. So far, more than $1 million worth of Alvarion network solutions have been installed for the first eight of Maryland's 24 counties.
BIG selected Alvarion's BreezeACCESS solution because of its non-line-of-site capabilities, security feature, high capacity, low-cost deployment and ability to add vehicular mobile access for public safety.
"For fixed connectivity, we chose BreezeACCESS because it is the total package," says John Dolmetsch, BIG's CIO. "It creates a cellular architecture that uses next-generation multipoint technology from a base station to deliver high bandwidth over long ranges, around buildings and through trees. And it does this using AES encryption without any impact on throughput. The entire network eliminates the government's need for leased lines, with payback in as short as one year, while also providing a tenfold improvement in Internet capacity and network speed."
