The Strix mesh network delivers high-speed broadband mobili ty and high-quality voice, video, data access to the general public.
The wireless network, called panOULU, provides open and free wireless (WiFi) Internet access to the general public and an established business plan for panOULU subscriptions enabling organizations to provide its own open panOULU visitor network to customers and guests in its premises.
The network is also available to municipal field operations and business users to help enhance their productivity and competitiveness. Oulu is northern Europe's most significant high-technology competence center, particularly in the areas of IT and wellness technology.
The panOULU network, in operation since 2003, provides open access to over 11,000 users. Statistics for January 2007 reports 5,656 regular users, 194,170 sessions, and 8.4 million online minutes.
The panOULU network currently has 675 access points (APs), of which 60 provide outdoor coverage for users on the city's buses and ferries and even the city's bookmobile.
Additional outdoor access points cover a large range of municipal service points, including in the city's libraries, schools, health stations, hospital, sports facilities, theatre, city hall, youth and culture center, and elderly centers.
The network is provided by the seven-member panOULU consortium, which comprises the City of Oulu, the University of Oulu, Oulu Polytechnic, VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, and three telcos: Elisa Plc., Netplaza Ltd., and Oulun Puhelin Plc.
The City of Oulu's COMPETENCE Oulu 400 program will expand the panOULU network by an additional 210 APs by the end of 2007. The expansion starts with 60 Strix Systems OWS 2400 APs to build the outdoor mesh network in the city center and other selected areas by October 2007.
The City of Oulu, together with the University of Oulu, reviewed and tested technologies provided by other leading manufactures and found that Strix's multi-radio Access/One OWS delivered the performance and flexibility it needed. The Strix OWS offers simple and automatic configuration and seamless integration with the existing network, while providing the highest throughput and most resilient and versatile performance.
Strix OWS 2400 was specifically chosen for its reduced Opex and lowest total cost of ownership; competing single- and multi-radio products required additional cost-prohibitive wired backhaul capacity. Without the Strix solution, expanding the outdoor network would have been too costly in the long term.
"Strix Access/One OWS is the perfect fit for our network. It provides the performance and low Opex we've been looking for," said Heikki Riikonen, project manager, City of Oulu.
"The panOULU network is a unique example of an innovative public/private partnership established to enable large-scale wireless access networks and bring entire cities on-line," said Jim Mooreland, vice president of worldwide sales, Strix.
For more information, see www.panoulu.net .
