ARIEL, West Bank, April 4 (UPI) -- Nortel announced Monday that the West Bank city of Ariel will be a testing ground for the firm's Wireless Mesh network technology.
The first areas approved by the Israeli Ministry of Communications to go wireless in the company's trial will be the pedestrian mall and Ariel College, according to a report on the Hebrew news Web site Ynet. The experiment is part of Ariel's "Smart City" initiative, the site said.
Ariel is a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
The pilot secures Israel's place among the most technologically advanced countries in the world, Nortel Israel and Eastern European Markets President Sorin Lupu said via the report.
"Nortel's Wireless Mesh Network solution extends the reach of Wireless LANs securely and cost-effectively for enterprises and end-users and offers service providers new opportunities to drive increased revenue generation," the company said on its Web site.
"City governments and municipalities benefit from enhanced employee safety and efficiency as well as from an improved business climate," the company continued.
In the future, Wireless Mesh will be able not only to relay information from peer to peer, but to also support cell phones so they don't have to use the mobile providers' networks, the news site said.
The technology is relatively simple and cheap, because it relies on people's computers and cell phones rather than on miles of installed Ethernet cable, the company said.
