Wi-Fi Mesh Poster Child Gambles On WiMAX.

One time municipal Wi-Fi mesh startup poster child Azulstar has ditched IEEE 802.11-based technology as its primary offering, and it's now going to gamble its survival on wireless broadband that uses IEEE 802.16 (best known as WiMAX).

The wireless broadband house, which fewer than two years ago looked headed for riches when it was tapped to build the high-prestige Silicon Valley mesh (TelecomWeb broadband, Sept. 6, 2006), says it's going to "upgrade" its existing muni Wi-Fi networks to WiMAX wherever possible, and it will offer WiMAX alongside a legacy Wi-Fi network, while essentially abandoning ownership of those networks where it can't also offer WiMAX.

"Azulstar will continue its strategy of owning and operating municipal wireless networks in regions where it can also deploy licensed-spectrum WiMAX," the company says. "In existing Azulstar projects where Wi-Fi technology is the only viable option due to spectrum limitations, Azulstar has migrated to a subcontractor role, assisting the municipalities and partners achieve their goals, but no longer acting as the network owner."

Rollout Plans

The WiMAX retrofit, the company explains, will encompass 15 cities in the mid- and southwest United States, including Grand Rapids, Mich., and Albuquerque, N.M. The first to be upgraded will be Azulstar's home town of Grand Haven, Mich., where a Wi-Fi mesh network has been in place for about five years.

The company is in the final stages of testing WiMAX in Grand Haven, with the first customers just about to be connected. Azulstar is using WiMAX equipment from Airspan Networks and Redline Communications, two of the relatively small group of only 13 companies that currently offer WiMAX Forum- certified hardware (the WiMAX Forum owns the trade name "WiMAX").

What Azulstar has under test, and eventually expects to offer, includes: