Motorola helps city workers stay connected

By Mike Hughlett
Chicago Tribune

BUFFALO, Minn. — Merton Auger, the city administrator here, likes to talk about "cutting down windshield time." That's the dead time when a public works employee drives to city hall to fill out a report on a busted streetlight or some other municipal malfunction.

Such a trip isn't necessary anymore in Buffalo, a town about 40 miles west of Minneapolis. Public employees, including police officers and firefighters, either have or soon will have full mobile computing capability, just as if they were in an office.

Buffalo is an early adopter of a technology known as a "mesh network," a wireless system that Motorola Inc. found so promising that it recently bought a leader in the field, MeshNetworks Inc.

Buffalo's network, switched on in February, was the first under the Motorola name.

Motorola has long been a market leader in wireless communication systems for public agencies, particularly police and fire departments. Mesh networks take those systems a step further, boosting their ability to transmit data and images, from routine accident reports to — eventually — real-time footage of police chases.

Mesh networks have potential life-saving attributes, too.

Vehicles and people can become "nodes" in a mesh network, sending and receiving radio signals. The technology can thus be used to track firefighters in a burning building. In fact, Motorola has a product due out later this year to do exactly that.

"It's the coolest thing we've had in a long time," Motorola system architect Keith Kemmerline said of the technology.

Kemmerline works in the Motorola division that specializes in radio systems for municipalities.

It doesn't get the attention of Motorola's mobile phone business but it has been a core operation for decades and comprises about 15 percent of the company's $31.3 billion in total sales last year.

MeshNetworks, on the other hand, was just a step beyond a startup when Motorola bought it earlier this year for $169 million. The firm was created in 2000 after buying mesh network rights from ITT Industries Inc., which had originally designed the technology for the U.S. military.

Its system is operating in five other cities: Medford, Ore.; Cocoa Beach, Fla.; Garland, Texas; Portsmouth, Britain; and, on a test basis, Las Vegas.

The mesh starts with a network of radio transmitters, usually attached to light poles, that blanket a city. The more hills and buildings — and the bigger the city — the more radios needed.

In Buffalo, a flat town of 13,000 people, there are 83 radios spread out over 11.5 square miles. In addition, seven Buffalo police cars have mesh radios and 20 public works employees have mesh-enabled laptops in their vehicles.

The radio signals bounce between the fixed and the mobile nodes to create a communications mesh. Even the laptops equipped with mesh cards are transmitting points, albeit somewhat weaker.

A mesh network with no fixed radios is a concept soon to be reality with Motorola's MeshTracker.

Due out later this year, it would allow firefighters to establish a network in a burning building, for instance. Each firefighter inside would carry a small mesh-enabled radio, allowing someone on the outside to track his whereabouts.

Winning over police departments is crucial if mesh networks are to become standard for municipalities.

Police officers and firefighters can be a tough sell on new technologies because they come from a culture in which wrong decisions can mean life or death, said Motorola's Kemmerline. "Public safety folks don't like to do anything untested, untried, unproven."

And at this point, said telecom analyst Ronald Gruia, mesh networks are "relatively unproven." The technology is "still in a baby stage right now," said Gruia of consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.

However, Motorola may offer a boost for mesh technology, since the company is so prominent in public safety communications.

"People are much more willing to take a risk on this," said Rick Rotondo, Motorola's mesh marketing director and an executive with MeshNetworks before the buyout. "The thinking now is 'Motorola is behind it, maybe there is something to it.' "