Summary: Need help with PR? If you are looking for a great PR firm, you've found one. Walker Sands is a leading Chicago PR firm with a strong track record that makes it one of top national PR agencies..

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Azulstar Networks, a Wi-Fi service provider, has stepped in to take over a metropolitan 820.11 network in Rio Rancho, N.M., originally planned with USURF America Inc., based here.
(article continues below useful links)

Intel Corp., which maintains multiple wafer fabs in Rio Rancho, has promoted the building a Wi-Fi network that covered the areas' full 103-square-miles.

Last year, the city agreed with USURF to provide the service, but the Colorado company pulled out of the deal in early fall, citing its multiple acquisitions of small service providers as changing its financial ability to develop the network.

Tyler van Houwelingen, founder of Azulstar (Grand Haven, Mich.), said he heard about the project while working on another metropolitan wireless network in New Mexico. van Houwelingen, a former Intel employee, founded Azulstar to develop wireless networks in Europe. Azulstar became part of Ottawa Wireless Inc. two years ago, serving as the network design arm for a broadband service provider serving Ottawa County, Mich., where Grand Haven is located.

"When we started looking at opportunities outside of Michigan for building Wi-Fi networks, it made more sense to revive the Azulstar name," Van Houwelingen said.

The current 802.11 systems will add wireless broadband backbones, and will use Proxim Inc. "pre-WiMax" equipment for the backbones. Other partners for the Rio Rancho project include: Meru Networks Inc., which will provide an access point suitable for packetized voice as well as data; and LogiSense Inc., which will provide operational support systems.

Azulstar will offer data services beginning at $19.95 a month, and voice-over-IP services at $24.95 a month, with all services rolling out in Rio Rancho by year's end. van Houwelingen said the company will continue to develop mixes of 802.11 and 802.16 systems that are appropriate for tiered topologies serving metropolitan areas. When 802.16e, the mobile extension to WiMax, is mature, it might replace Wi-Fi. Until then, Azulstar will promote Wi-Fi and WiMax hybrid networks.

Copyright © 2004. EE Times