Renfrewshire Council was looking for a sustainable solution to provide citizens with residential high speed broadband. The programme, called Digital Inclusion Project, was designed to cover an area of around 5 square kilometers. Responses to the council's tender included broadband vendors offering hard-wired solutions.

CXS, however, put forward a proposal for a wireless solution, which was 1/10th the cost of hard-wired solutions. Having reviewed proposals, the council decided to work with CXS due to the economic advantages of the wireless solution compared to fixed line proposals suggested by other vendors.

The implementation called for a large and robust network. CXS delivered by using 70 Proxim AP-4000MRs to cover over 2,600 households and 25 point-to-point and point-to-multipoint links (utilizing 40 Proxim Tsunami MP.11s) for backhaul to a 30Mbps internet 'pipe'. The 30Mbps wireless backhaul extends over 12 kilometers from Johnstone in Renfrewshire to Shortroods at Glasgow Airport.

Gordon Giles, Renfrewshire Digital Inclusion Manager, stated: "This has been a new and innovative project. I'm not aware of many other initiatives that provide wireless and mesh broadband into residential homes to allow social inclusion covering an area of 5 square kilometers."

"The final decision to deploy Proxim's Tsunami was not just due to low cost," Paul Devlin from CXS commented. "We evaluated a variety of wireless deployments and conducted research on point-to-point and point-to-multipoint wireless technology. Our focus and concerns were the ability to manage the long term elements of the network, and we decided that Proxim's technology was most suited for the environment in which we wanted to deploy it. Proxim's solution outperformed other vendors which were evaluated and is easy to manage and very user-friendly."

"Proxim's support infrastructure also matches our needs as a company developing its own IT strategy," Devlin added. "Proxim has been very supportive throughout these deployments, from pre-installation to the management and maintenance of the implementation."

Anthony Fulgoni, VP International Strategic Sales, added: "This has been an exciting project. It is also very rewarding to know that the community is benefiting in such a positive way. I admire the strategy of tackling digital and social inclusion, and we are already working on numerous other projects to enable remote communities to enjoy the same facilities as other more connected areas."

Keywords: wireless backhaul, paul devlin, digital inclusion, inclusion project, square kilometers, internet pipe, glasgow airport, banking council, social inclusion, commerce facilities, robust network, sustainable solution, innovative project, 11s, Wireless VOIP