New Missouri town goes wireless

A new 725-acre planned community in eastern Missouri is being built entirely with wireless systems, helping businesses avoid the costs of laying fiber and other traditional infrastructure.

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The community, called New Town at St. Charles, Mo., already has 800 homes built with architectural styles of a traditional American small town.

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A new 725-acre planned community in eastern Missouri is being built entirely with wireless systems, helping businesses avoid the costs of laying fiber and other traditional infrastructure.

Slideshow: 8 pieces of cool WiMAX gear
Sprint to deploy WiMAX in 10 U.S. cities in 2009

The community, called New Town at St. Charles, Mo., already has 800 homes built with architectural styles of a traditional American small town.

So far, there are 2,000 residents with five businesses serviced by a combination of microwave, WiMAX backhaul, Wi-Fi and related technology, said Jason Crane, IT director at Whittaker Homes, the principal developer on the project. The wireless technologies are used to provide Internet services to homes and businesses. It also provides video surveillance to the town's businesses.

Crane worked with TSI Integrated Technologies in St. Charles as the wireless integrator, and they picked Proxim Wireless for the technology.

"Wireless is definitely less costly than putting in fiber cable," Crane said. "There's no boring or underground laying of fiber or even copper. It takes half the time for installation easily."

The wireless equipment and supporting systems have cost about $50,000, which is probably half as much as a traditional system with copper or fiber, Crane estimated.

"Wireless is something I wanted from the start, and as the town is being built, wireless is easy to expand," Crane said. There are several large land tracts left that can accommodate many hundreds more homes, he said.

Proxim was picked because its technology seemed resilient and was lower cost than several competitors, Crane said. The 800 residents and five businesses so far only require five Proxim Wi-Fi access points. The Wi-Fi radios are connected via unlicensed WiMAX over Proxim Tsunami MP.11 point-to-multipoint radios. Those radios, in turn, are connected to the microwave GigaLink radios, providing a connection to the older town of St. Charles about two miles away.

The site is built on former agricultural land, and is mostly flat. Principal planning on the project was provided by Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Co. in Miami, which has built 300 communities based on small town designs.

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