* Outdoor WLAN deployed on island of St. Maarten
There’s a lot of hoopla over the wireless LAN network being built in the city of Philadelphia. But as I gaze out my office window at the snow drifting downward through the frigid New York air, I am more intrigued by a press release about a metropolitan Wi-Fi project that’s a little further south.
Lucent and BelAir Networks recently revealed they have deployed a WLAN for the Caribbean island of St. Maarten, of the Netherlands Antilles.
Now, I have never been to this island, but a quick check on weather.com shows the current conditions as 82 degrees and partly cloudy, which sounds mighty fine right about now.
So let’s find out more about this WLAN, shall we?
As you might expect, it provides wireless Internet and e-mail access for the island’s residents, as well as the 2 million who visit the island every year. The service is currently free, but soon will not be, as users will need to prepay for access.
The service covers the main street in the downtown area and the boardwalk at the beach, according to the release. Eventually the service will be extended to the entire island, according to the commissioner of tourism of St. Maarten.
The network equipment comes from BelAir, with Lucent Worldwide Services deploying the technology in less than three weeks. These two companies have only just started working together; this was their first joint project.
The BelAir 200 is the wireless switch router they deployed, and it is built specifically for outdoor use. It has the ability to beam WLAN signals directly into buildings from outside so that users don’t have to deploy access points inside.
By the way, for those of you who still want to know more about Philadelphia’s WLAN, my colleague John Cox this week penned this great Q&A with that city’s CIO: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2005/011705yourtakeneff.html
