* WLANs showing up in sunny locales
Soon after the last issue went out – describing yet another example of public wireless LANs going into cities with warm climates – more WLAN providers announced they are rolling out WLANs to two more cities. And yes, these cities are south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Pronto Networks, which has a hand in the Daytona Beach network described earlier this week, now is teaming up with BelAir Networks, which was part of the WLAN deployment in the Netherlands Antilles. The city they’re bringing Wi-Fi to is San Antonio, Texas.
Meanwhile, SMC Networks let me know that its equipment was “selected to build a scalable wired and wireless network on the white sand beaches of Panama City Beach, Florida.”
I guess it stands to reason – put WLANs in places where people spend a lot of time outdoors.
The downtown Alamo Plaza area of San Antonio will be the focus of the newly created partnership between Pronto and BelAir. The partnership highlights BelAir’s multi-service switch routers and Pronto’s operations support system software.
Other companies involved with the San Antonio effort are service provider SA Unwired.net, consulting firm Hotzone Integrators and integrator NAS Wireless. The “hot zone” (rather than “hot spot”) covers several blocks of shops, restaurants and businesses in the plaza right across from the Alamo, the companies say. Target users are residents and tourists.
The network took less than a day to install, the companies say. Five BelAir nodes cover the plaza. SA Unwired plans to charge $3 per hour, or $10 per day, for wireless Internet access.
In Panama City Beach, SMC’s TigerAccess Extended Ethernet VDSL and EliteConnect Enterprise Wireless network products will be used. More than 70 wireless access points have been distributed throughout the Dunes of Panama Resort – so that guests can access the Internet from their rooms. Or from the pool.
Gulf Coast Wireless provides the network, which it implemented along with Deep Blue Wireless.
