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March 23, 2004

T-Mobile Invests in BelAir Networks

By Glenn Fleishman

Can you say “wireless mesh backhaul”?: T-Mobile’s venture arm has invested $2 million in BelAir, but does this signal an interest in deploying BelAir’s equipment to provide wireless mesh backhaul for the 4,200 hotspots in the T-Mobile HotSpot network? According to many sources over the last few years, MobileStar and then T-Mobile committee to a T-1 infrastructure for Starbucks, paying all the costs. Switching to wireless backhaul has the potential to dramatically reduce recurring costs if there are enough Starbucks stores reachable by point-to-point signals.

In related news, T-Mobile adds another logo to their hotspot model. The network is now officially Cisco Powered, as opposed to before when it was just Cisco “powered.” There’s a co-marketing benefit from this, but no practical change. It’s more of a boon for Cisco which can try out Wi-Fi authentication experiments in the real world.

Posted by Glennf at March 23, 2004 6:41 AM

Categories: Enterprise

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» When Munis Go Wi-Fi from Om Malik on Broadband
A lot of municipalities are embracing the good ole Wi-Fi technology. Jumping on the bandwagon today are West Des Moines, Iowa, Show Low, Arizona and Lincoln, Nebraska. (They are all using gear from BelAir Networks which got a big investment... [Read More]

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