TALK OF THE BROADBAND ECONOMY

Wi-Fi on wheels

Aiirmesh Communications is making the street of Cerritos, Calif., Wi-Fi friendly with its recent deployment of the technology aboard city buses. The project is an extension of its year-old Wi-Fi rollout that covers the entire 8.6 miles of Cerritos and now will extend to the surrounding communities of Artesia, La Palma, La Miranda, Bellflower, Lakewood, Buena Park and Norwalk, a total of 40 square miles.

The deployment is the only transportation-based Wi-Fi deployment in the U.S., according to Tony Esfandiari, Aiirmesh CEO. The Metro in Paris and Lufthansa airlines in Germany also have Wi-Fi.

“As an Aiirmesh subscriber in the city of Cerritos, you'll be able to roam in the city, use the Wi-Fi outdoors sitting in a café, hop on the bus to go across town and be able to do the same thing — use your laptop on the bus,” Esfandiari said. “The idea was, ‘Hey, we have this Wi-Fi cloud, we might as well use it. Let's look for applications. What can we do, and how can we monetize this network?’”

The pilot program started in early May and is free to users for the first 60 days. Thereafter, Cerritos Wi-Fi subscribers can access the system along with their regular Wi-Fi access. Esfandiari says it's too early to tell how many people will use the service on the buses, but with 160,000 people riding the city's seven buses annually, he's optimistic.

“It has to be applicable; it has to be useful,” he said. “Wi-Fi is about application, filling a need. It's a wonderful thing if you can deploy this technology where the traffic is terrible, like in Los Angeles, to increase the productivity of the citizens.”

Each bus has its own access point to tap into the signal, and the bus has a Wi-Fi cloud around it of at least 10 to 20 feet. Because the buses in the system are brand new, the installation and wiring of the equipment was relatively simple, Esfandiari said. A12-DC unit powers the system, and Aiirmesh engineers worked with the company that designed the buses to devise a solution that would provide ample power for the network.

Plans are in the works to set up two large cities on the East Coast with similar city-bus pilot programs, to see how the service is received.

“This industry usually doesn't make money, so we have to come up with creative ways to monetize and pay for the network, to keep it running, keep the lights on and make a profit,” Esfandiari said. “It's a long-term strategy. Everyone's talking about free Wi-Fi, but that's a bad word — free. If everybody gives away Wi-Fi, I don't understand who's going to pay for the infrastructure.”