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A field trial of Nortel's Mesh - at a Wild Flower Arts Festival in Texas

Nortel has finally managed to admit that its wireless Mesh isn't yet a market leader, by installing a test bed version in Richardson, Texas, as a public "hotzone" WiFi network, this week.

The fashion for setting up metro WiFi is spreading fast across North America, and with it, controversy about whether it's fair competition for people trying to run voice phone services.

This latest is being run mainly for the benefit of Richardson city staff - to provide "personnel including police and fire departments with access into the city's emergency and other proprietary communications systems," says the release. But it was primarily set up to provide public access at this year's Wildflower! Arts and Music Festival (May 20-22), and from Nortel's point of view, "it is a field trial of Nortel's Wireless Mesh Network solution."

Nobody is saying this, but there's the strong implication that Nortel is subsidising this experiment.

"This is an extension of our relationship with Nortel. The company has already delivered an award-winning communications network for the city that is significantly cutting information technology and networking costs," said Steve Graves, chief information officer, City of Richardson. "We are looking at their Mesh wireless technology as another leading-edge solution than can help us improve our networking capabilities."

The 'hotzone' wireless network is offering free broadband access in the Galatyn Park Urban Center area of Richardson's "Telecom Corridor"  and "provides business commuters and consumers in the area with broadband capabilities for video streaming, surfing the Internet, downloading emails with large attachments and accessing corporate/private networks."

Nortel's five cents worth about the technology reveals little about how it works, and more about Nortel's ability to create flowery prose: "Wireless Mesh is another example of how Nortel is enhancing the human experience by delivering 'Office Anywhere' mobility solutions that provide users with consistent, reliable and secure network access regardless of how they are communicating, what device they are using, or where they are located," said Mark Whitton, general manager, Wireless LAN Solutions, Nortel.

Nortel's Mesh technology uses what it terms  'self-aware' wireless access points which, once installed, identify other nearby units and automatically create a 'mesh' radio architecture that interconnects and moves networking traffic between each.

"This is ideally suited to providing coverage across streets, buildings and various terrain where it would be cost-prohibitive to run networking cables," said the announcement this week. "This architecture also provides a much more cost-effective 'backhaul' solution, as only one, or a few, of the radio units require leased broadband connections from a service provider."

Just like LocustWorld has been installing all over the world for the last two years, then... and for a very different budget.