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Tropos has announced that Pittsburgh has gone live with its downtown Wi-Fi network using the Tropos MetroMesh municipal Wi-Fi infrastructure, the most widely deployed Wi-Fi mesh technology in the world.

The initiative of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership (PDP) in conjunction with the city of Pittsburgh, the network is operated by US Wireless Online and provides free and fee-based packages for outdoor access in the central business district/Golden Triangle, and the growing areas of North Shore and Lower Hill District.

"Our goal is to bring cutting-edge amenities to downtown Pittsburgh to continue to enhance and enrich the experience of workers, residents and visitors to the area. Wi-Fi Downtown Pittsburgh creates a valuable community resource for connecting people while outdoors," said Michael M. Edwards, president and CEO of the PDP. "The attractive economics of the Tropos solution has allowed us, in partnership with US Wireless Online, to establish a network quickly and economically. Plus the Tropos technology gives us the flexibility and capability to deal with the environmental challenges presented by the hilly terrain of the area."

During the opening NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Miami Dolphins, the city held a promotional kick-off for the downtown network signing up 500 users and trialing 45 users prior to this Wednesday's formal launch. Free access is provided at 512 Kbps of bandwidth while fee-based packages of $7.99 per day, $14.99 per month or $119.99 per year receive 1 Mbps.

In addition to the downtown, Wi-Fi Downtown Pittsburgh is also providing municipal benefits, including four secured mobile command units now up and running for the city of Pittsburgh public safety use. In the next couple of months, it will address digital divide issues by providing complimentary connections in partnership with Wireless Neighborhoods, an alliance of community and faith organizations committed to support children's education, promote economic development and address other social barriers.

The Pittsburgh network uses more than 55 Tropos Networks' 5210 MetroMesh Wi-Fi routers on light poles throughout the downtown, enabling reliable wireless data connectivity between users and the Internet. Deployed in more than 300 customer sites worldwide, Tropos MetroMesh routers quickly and economically use the intelligent Tropos predictive wireless routing protocol (PWRP) to provide pervasive coverage over metro areas. PWRP forms a wireless mesh, dynamically routing traffic along the highest throughput path to a wired gateway. This intelligent routing negates effects of radio-frequency interference, wired backhaul failure and mesh router failure.