Azulstar, the once-but-no-longer-future service provider in the high-profile Wireless Silicon Valley and Sacramento MetroConnect muni Wi-Fi projects in California, announced this week that it will upgrade its existing networks with WiMAX technology. The company said in a press release that it will enhance “all of its existing municipal Wi-Fi networks with WiMAX technology, using equipment from Airspan Networks and Redline Communications.”
It will be interesting to see if WiMAX will be the silver bullet needed to restore Azulstar’s previous high profile in the muni market. According to the release “The networks being upgraded include Grand Haven, MI – America’s first municipal Wi-Fi network, which recently entered its 5th year of operation, and are part of larger regional WiMAX rollouts by Azulstar across 15 cities in the mid- and southwest USA including Grand Rapids, MI and Albuquerque, NM. ”
This week’s announcement touts the company’s early successes, saying that it has “been involved in many of the nation’s largest and most visible muni Wi-Fi deployments.” Conspiciously absent from the release is any comment on the company’s difficulties in other municipalities. Azulstar was to have been the service provider in the ambitious Wireless Silicon Valley deployment, partnering the IBM and Cisco, but left that partnership after the group failed to raise investment capital for the project. Its partnerships in WinstonNet in Winston-Salem, NC, and with MetroConnect in Sacramento, Calif., also sputtered out. And last year, Rio Rancho, New Mexico, another high-profile Azulstar partner, shut down its wireless network following a dispute with the company over unpaid electrical bills. According to a recent report in The Rio Rancho Observer, however, the company has asked the city council there for a “second chance”.
According to the press release, “WiMax solves many of the implementation challenges that have previously stalled or slowed the deployment of municipal wireless projects. Projects that previously were not feasible or profitable will now be achievable.”
Cities need to be cautious. Azulstar plans to use the 3.65 spectrum, which may provide fixed coverage, but is not going to provide solid mobile connectivity due to the FCC power limitations on the 3.65 band. This is not mobile WiMAX, even though Azulstar’s coverage maps apparently promise the sort of connectivity of a mobile WiMAX solution.