Tropos on Municipal Networks

Sometimes the entire concept of a Muni-wireless program for a city ends up reading more like the beginnings of a soap opera than a real city-wide Wi-Fi solution. This seems to be the case with Tropos according to some recent news from the Wi-Fi Networking news. Where does the drama end and the problems solving end?

After last week’s kerfuffle over the release of the New Millennium Research Council (NMRC) report on municipal broadband, telecom, and cable, I thought it would be useful to the readers of this site to hear from Tropos Networks, a leading municipal wireless product vendor.

Tropos is a metropolitan-scale mesh network provider that I’ve been following for a few years. While they started in competition with enterprise campus networking equipment manufacturers, they quickly found a niche in public-safety and broadband networking in cities and towns that needed the kind of infrastructure that mesh can provide. Ron Sege, the CEO and president of Tropos, spoke with me yesterday about the NMRC and the municipal market in general.

Sege agreed that municipal networks don’t always make sense, but said that the report overstated the case by far. “Sweeping statements were made without any substantiation,” he said.

Read the rest of the interview after the jump.