New York City is building the first wireless network capable of providing true broadband speeds to fast-moving vehicles such as police cars and fire trucks.

New York City officials awarded the 5-year, $500 million wireless project to Northrop Grumman last week. The network will be available in all five burroughs of New York City in 18 months.

"No other city in the world is doing what New York City is doing," says Paul Chelson, program director of New York's Citywide Mobile Wireless Network Project for Northrop Grumman."The ability to move broadband wireless mobile data to anybody, anywhere in the street, even while moving at high speed, is something that's revolutionary."

New York City's new wireless network will provide high-speed data and video communications to police, fire, transportation and other agencies responsible for emergency response. The network will use IP and other Internet standards to ensure interoperability with New York State and federal agencies.

The losing bidder on the New York City wireless network was Motorola.

Northrop Grumman's system is built around radio access nodes and modems from IPWireless of San Bruno, Calif. The IPWireless gear supports the 3G/Universal Mobile Telecommunications System standards popular in Europe and Asia.

"IPWireless is deployed in many parts of the world, but there are not many installations in the [United States]," Chelson said, adding that the company has networks deployed in New Zealand, the Czech Republic and Japan. "In South Africa, the whole country uses an IPWireless network."

Two carriers - Sprint Nextel and Transvideo Communications - will provide the spectrum needed for the system. Cisco will provide IP switches and routers.

Northrop Grumman won the New York City project after successfully demonstrating a prototype system in Lower Manhattan, which is a difficult location because of its many tall buildings. City officials spent three months evaluating the Northrop Grumman and Motorola prototypes for security, reliability and redundancy.

"They wanted the systems to support mobile communications at up to 70 miles an hour, and very, very few technologies support that kind of mobility," Chelson says. "They wanted very high bandwidth on the street. They wanted it to be manageable, and they wanted it never to go down."