[July 15, 2004] Chaska.net Goes Live with Tropos Metro-Scale Wi-Fi Network and Quickly Sees Explosive Subscriber Growth CHASKA, Minn. --(Business Wire)-- July 15, 2004 -- 20% of the City's Households Have Already Pre-Subscribed to the $15.99/Month Ubiquitous Wi-Fi Service Based on Tropos Networks Equipment Tropos Networks, the leading supplier of equipment used to build metro-scale Wi-Fi networks, today announced that chaska.net, a wireless internet service provider (WISP) owned and operated by the City of Chaska, Minnesota, has gone live with it's metro-scale Wi-Fi network completely covering the 16 square mile footprint of the community. The wireless broadband network, delivering symmetric data rates of 1-3 Mbps throughout the city with unlimited mobility, has proven to be a very attractive alternative to existing cable, DSL and dial-up services for the residents of the city. Chaska.net started marketing its service and accepting pre-subscriptions just four weeks ago. In that short timeframe, chaska.net has seen a 20% take rate, with more than 1,500 subscriptions out of 7,500 homes. By eliminating truck rolls, expensive CPE equipment and costly wired backhaul, the metro-scale Wi-Fi solution from Tropos allows chaska.net to offer enhanced broadband services at a fraction of the cost of the service plans available from the existing cable and DSL providers. The price point of $15.99 per month with unlimited mobility throughout the city has made the service economically alluring for Chaska residents. "We are very pleased with the community response to our metro-scale Wi-Fi offering," said Bradley Mayer, IS Manager for chaska.net. "The demand for the service has far surpassed our most optimistic projections. The goal of chaska.net is to create a valuable community resource for our residents. The attractive economics of the Tropos solution has allowed us to do that very quickly and economically." In addition to the economic advantages of the service, subscribers stay connected to the community via a specially created chaska.net home page. This community resource highlights current city events and special promotions of local merchants and organizations. "Chaska.net is great," said Peggy Hatfield, a chaska.net subscriber who has tried dial-up and cable services in the past year. "Dial-up was entirely too slow, and tied up my phone line, and I hated paying the price of broadband service. But with chaska.net I'm getting true broadband speeds for a dial-up price! Setup was very easy, and I was online in a matter of minutes. This service is a great way for me to stay connected with the community." The city-wide chaska.net network utilizes 186 Tropos 5110 Wi-Fi cells, an outdoor-optimized and ruggedized wireless mesh router based on the 802.11 standard. The Tropos 5110 quickly and economically uses the intelligent Tropos Predictive Wireless Routing Protocol (PWRP) to provide pervasive coverage over metro areas. The Tropos PWRP routes traffic wirelessly, eliminating up to 95% of the wired backhaul associated with traditional access point solutions. Tropos Wi-Fi cells form a wireless mesh, dynamically routing traffic along the highest throughput path to a wired gateway. This intelligent routing negates effects of radio frequency (RF) interference, wired backhaul failure and node failure. PWRP also scales to thousands of nodes with the lowest routing overhead in the industry. To further minimize costs, Chaska.net uses a combination of city fiber and fixed point-to-multipoint wireless technology for its backhaul connections. Network support costs are minimized via the central management capabilities of the Tropos Control Element Manager, a configuration, monitoring and maintenance tool. About Tropos Networks, Inc. Tropos Networks, Inc. is a leading supplier of systems used to build metro-scale, outdoor Wi-Fi networks. Tropos unique Wi-Fi cells, along with the first element manager to control large Wi-Fi networks, enable public agencies and service providers to deliver ubiquitous, city-wide mobile broadband to users in any locale. These carrier-class IP networks are low cost and easy to install and scale. The Tropos cellular mesh architecture and use of optimized open-standard radios dramatically reduce the need for wired backhaul while eliminating expensive proprietary clients and complex software. Using the patented Predictive Wireless Routing Protocol(TM), Tropos solutions deliver maximum bandwidth to the user regardless of conditions, at unprecedented Wi-Fi network scale. Tropos Networks is headquartered in San Mateo, California. For more information, please visit www.tropos.com, call 650-286-4250 or write to [email protected]. Tropos Networks and Tropos are trademarks of Tropos Networks, Inc. All other brand or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holder(s). About chaska.net Chaska.net is a Wireless Internet Provider (WISP) owned and operated by the City of Chaska; providing wireless Internet services to residential and business users in Chaska and other Caver County, MN areas. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]