Peter Orne Wireless Government Subscribe to Newsletter Tell a Friend Print this Page 03/07/2008 BelAir Networks CEO Bernard Herscovich: "Massive Shift in the Mindset of CIOs" Wireless-industry veteran Bernard Herscovich is the founding president and CEO of BelAir Networks in Kanata, Ontario. According to the Dell'Oro Group, BelAir is now the worldwide wireless mesh node market leader based on revenue in Q3 and Q4 of 2007. In December 2007, the company received a new round of financial backing from its investors. And on March 11, 2008, Minnesota-based USI Wireless is expected to announce the completion of its Wireless Minneapolis mesh network, which uses BelAir radios, supports a citywide public-access business model with thousands of subscribers, and played a critical role during the emergency response after the I-35W bridge collapse last August. It’s an excellent moment to check in on a CEO whose equipment and market mindset going forward suggest that rumors of "muni Wi-Fi's" death have been greatly exaggerated — and that its use for a broad range of both government and popular objectives will continue to proliferate. Q. Congratulations to BelAir Networks on the renewed investor support. In your view, what does this say about the company heading into 2008? A. What it says is that there is a vote of confidence not only in the capability of the company but in the market segments the we are pursuing right now. If you look at where we sell today, it’s local government, public safety, police departments, transit authorities, ports and so on. We’re selling into the Armed Forces — there’s our project with the U.S. Navy and the SSC Charleston’s Wireless Pier Connection Systems. We are selling into the hospitality sector and to industrials, utilities and manufacturing sites and so on. We have proof points, and these are very solid markets. One of the things that has distinguished us is that we have chased solid business models, so we were never going after an opportunity that sounded too good to be true from an end-user or business-model perspective. Q. Going forward in 2008, do you believe citywide wireless service provision will remain a primary market driver? A. When we look at local government, in our mind it does not mean necessarily what was EarthLink’s business model, or an EarthLink type of ecosystem solution. We look at the key needs of the local government. In the area of public safety, there are massive programs now through which to secure funding, including video cameras in fixed and mobile applications, and also general solutions that are creating productivity improvements in cities’ own solutions. It’s not so much about the Internet-service-provider opportunity. We look at the local government as a subset of the enterprise market. Q. Local-government budgets are expected to remain tight over the next couple of years, requiring ever more thorough business modeling by communities that want to do something in the core, or citywide. What are key agenda items for city officials in the year ahead? A. I see local government getting more and more involved. Where it started, it was economic development, fostering low-cost Internet access, with local government as an enabler for a service provider to go and undercut an ILEC or DSL. Now it’s migrated to specific applications that are critical for the local government and productivity. There’s been a massive shift in the mindset of CIOs when they see that you can put a network into a city for a certain objective — such as high crime in a public-transit space. You can put a video camera on a suburban train. That builds safety and usage, and the goal of economic development and helping the disadvantaged — well, that’s the cherry on the cake. Now it’s about a set of capabilities that require critical reliability. It’s more than about the best-effort Internet. If there were early proof points for this, think of the Cave Creek forest fires in 2005, where firefighters maintained constant communication over the mesh network to help fight the second-largest wildfire in Arizona’s history. Q. i also recall the role mesh played in enabling surveillance cameras and GIS mapping after the Minneapolis bridge collapse last August. Heading into 2008, Minneapolis is continuing to emerge as a leading success story. What are your thoughts on this implementation? Any special takeaways, lessons learned? A. Of course, it’s a very large project, and we found a partner in USI Wireless, which had a view of the market that was synergistic with our own. So we did not build the lowest lowest cost network, and we asked ourselves, what are the criteria to be successful, in terms of speed and the city’s needs in terms of bandwidth, and we put those things together and have created a flagship network that is becoming a strong success story. It was proven in a real-life situation, and it’s able to deliver on the technical capabilities. Q. Do you think the Minneapolis deployment could shift opinion favorably back toward public access? A. We’ve been very fortunate with the City of Minneapolis. They have a very solid head on their shoulders in what they need, and our role was to provide a technical solution that met or exceeded their needs. We are definitely very proud of this network from the perspective of the technical capability, and as more companies speak to USI Wireless, I believe it’s going to show that these networks are possible. But they have to be consistent with the requirements, and have to be funded properly to meet all these ingredients. Q. How will the 700 Mhz spectrum auction impact mesh deployments around the country? A. We are watching very closely the 700 Mhz spectrum, just as we’ve been watching a number of other frequencies, and the moment we see excitement from our customers — the way we have architected our system, we place the same module in all our units, and we would expect to be able to do the same with 700 Mhz. back Related Items: • Beaverton, OR • W2i Finalizes Program Agenda for Digital Cities Convention in Washington, DC • Bowling Green (KY) Launches Public Safety Wi-Fi • Interoperability Grants — An Opportunity for Tomorrow, If You Know Where to Look Today! • Government Processes Reengineering Roundtable: Summary • WEBINAR: Wireless Video Surveillance at the DNC and RNC Conventions Comments No records were found. Post new comment: Only registered users can add comments. Please Log-in

• MORE BLOGS