Features

LocustWorld takes the Mesh around the world, from CTIA to VON

LocustWorld has completed a whistle-stop world tour, speaking at major industry conferences in the USA and Europe throughout the month of March 2005.

First stop  was in California with Pulver.com - Mesh Voice at the Pulver.com Spring VON in San Jose California, then on to CTIA Wireless in New Orleans and finally the "Hotspot" event at Bussen in the Netherlands.

Speaking in public presentations and smaller meetings throughout a 10 day programme in the US, LocustWorld have found keen interest in Wireless Mesh Voice services with audiences from all over the USA and beyond. Telephone service companies, Internet Service Providers, Telecoms Analysts, Press, Government and Systems Integrators are all looking at Wireless Mesh with great interest.

Municipal wireless projects are a hot topic, attracting interest from  established service providers and new entrants. Wireless Mesh is a natural fit for city and county wide wireless internet access. Wireless Mesh has a proven record for delivery of excellent returns on investment, fast rollout and high reliability, providing broadband internet and voice over IP.

Jeff Pulver's Spring VON event was the first stop for LocustWorld. Pulver.com keep breaking their own records, and the VON events keep getting bigger and bigger. Spring VON, with over 6,000 attendees, was the biggest VON ever, again! Held in San Jose, the capital of Silicon Valley, Spring VON attracted a lot of interest from the local technology community, and also many international visitors.

LocustWorld were invited to speak at the VON WiFi Summit, showing how wireless mesh delivers voice services. With prioritised packet delivery, on mesh SIP routing and integrated VOIP switching, the LocustWorld Mesh delivers excellent support for voice applications and co-exists with wireless broadband services on the same network.

Asterisk publishers Digium were also present at Spring VON. Mark Spencer, author of Asterisk, made several public presentations at the conference and the Asterisk pavilion was the biggest stand at the show. On the final day of the show we had some fun and set up a "Mesh VoIP Bike", showing off a pedal bike equipped with a meshbox and voip phone, which drew a lot of attention, and caught the imagination of the visitors to the show.

LocustWorld attracted interest from the Press too. Alain Baritault from Cites Numerique said "Wireless Mesh is a very exciting technology. Adding support for Voice over IP makes the Mesh even more disruptive."

The next stop was New Orleans, for the CTIA Wireless show, billed as "The Most Important Technology Event of the Year". Attracting tens of thousands of visitors CTIA certainly is a major event. LocustWorld joined Pulver in the "WIFI VOIP summit" showing how wireless mesh and voice over IP is
changing the landscape for the established mobile phone networks and internet service providers.

www.MyWireless.org, a campaign group, was launched in sync with the CTIA show. Co-located with CTIA, MyWireless.org is a consumer campaign pressing to keep wireless networks free from legal restrictions and taxes. Several US states are proposing new legislation to limit wireless internet services and to add significant taxes to wireless services. Many Mesh network operators using the LocustWorld system are affected by these proposals, and some, such as NetWi, are running campaigns of their own too. See http://members.aol.com/netwi/alert.htm

BroadcastPress.nl teamed up with hotspot.nl to run the 3rd annual "Hotspot Event 2005". With speakers from Tmobile, Rabobank, Sony, Danish Health Service Projects and many more, the Hotspot event drew a great crowd from all over the country. LocustWorld were invited to the event to show how wireless mesh projects are taking off world wide and to debate the issues surrounding wireless internet and the disruption that it brings to telcomsmarkets.

Links:

Pulver www.pulver.com
CTIA www.ctia.org www.ctiawireless.com
www.ctiawireless.com/education/seminars.cfm#wifi
Mywireless www.mywireless.org
Digium www.digium.com
Savemuniwireless http://www.savemuniwireless.org/

Broadcast Press: http://www.broadcastpress.nl/
Hotspot.nl http://www.hotspot.nl/