 Mobile professionals can access the Internet or
their corporate virtual -private networks (VPNs) wirelessly at speeds of
up to 11Mbps starting this month when access points are installed in
different parts of Singapore.
There will be 49
access points with 14 located in the east, 12 in the north, 19 in the
central business district and four in the western area of Singapore by end
of April, said Derrick Lee, chief executive officer of Bluengine, a
Singapore-based franchiser of cyber cafes.
Under the Cisco Internet Mobile Programme (CIMO), Bluengine is
investing $1 million to $2 million to deploy the 802.11b wireless base
stations in the designated locations.
Connection through these points is free of charge up to a certain
period of time, said Lee.
Access points are
expected to be located in "hotspots" such as the airport, hotels,
convention centres, restaurants, cafes and fast food joints.
Users with notebooks equipped with wireless
LAN (local area network) cards can download latest files, data or
presentation materials from their corporate VPN or
Internet.
"They can also make adjustments to
their presentations or upload files -using the broadband infrastructure,"
said Lee.
Late last month, networking company
Cisco announced its CIMO -initiative in Singapore.
Apart from Bluengine, Cisco has partnered with broadband service
provider Davnet; gateway and roaming technologies developer iPass and
local Internet service provider StarHub Internet.
CIMO aims to bring the mobile office to enterprises, providing
instant Internet for mobile professionals at the office, on the move and
in the home, said Freddy Cheung (pictured above), director for Commercial
Line of Business Asia Pacific at Cisco.
"The
initiative will provide an integrated solution of available Cisco and
partner-based technologies, packaged and marketed as an end-to-end
solution to service providers and enterprises," Cheung
added.
Asked whether Cisco is considering
working with the likes of Singapore Telecom and MobileOne, Cheung said
that the company is currently in discussion with more possible partners
for the CIMO initiative in and out of Singapore.
Cisco is at www.cisco.com while Bluengine is at www.bluengine.com. |