US-BASED networking giant Cisco Systems Inc has announced an initiative to bring mobile computing to a higher level for mobile corporate users.

Asiana reports: Two wireless broadband Internet "hot spots" have been launched at UOB Plaza and Shaw House, enabling mobile professionals in the atriums and open areas nearby to have high-speed Internet access to their corporate net-works. In all, 48 wireless hot spots will be set up throughout Singapore by Davnet, and will be part of the wired/wireless hot spot coverage under the Cisco Internet Mobile Office initiative.

In an aggressive rollout plan, Davnet will activate 10 more hot spots in Orchard Road, Raffles Place and Boat Quay within the next four weeks. Davnet also plans to have wireless hot spots in other high density business areas outside the Central Business District, such as Tampines, the International Business Park in Jurong and other technology and science parks by August.

Subscribers to Davnet can take advantage of the new service simply by installing a Cisco Aironet wireless LAN (Local Area Network) card into their mobile computers. The card costs between $300 and $500. The wireless LAN card acts as an antenna to connect the computing device via radio waves to a base station in the building. The connection range extends to distances of up to 200 metres. The high-speed network is capable of transferring data at a rate of up to 11.1 Mbps, which is over 200 times faster than the typical 56 kbps for dial-up modems.

"The wireless broadband Internet access will make UOB Plaza an even more desirable location," said Louis Chan, Vice President of Property Division for United Overseas Bank. The service is available to everyone -- our tenants as well as members of the public who use the UOB Plaza atrium."

The new wireless broadband network is built around an end-to-end Cisco Systems network and is part of the Cisco Internet Mobile Office (CIMO) initiative. The Cisco Internet Mobile Office seamlessly extends an organization's internal network by providing mobile users with secure, high-speed access to the Internet and corporate resources in locations such as airports, convention centers, hotels and restaurants, as well as in the area surrounding the office.

Cisco Internet Mobile Office is an ecosystem of service providers, application service providers, and systems integrators, who offer end-to-end connectivity to enterprise customers outside the traditional confines of the office. The infrastructure is built on a range of technologies developed by Cisco, including a security solution based on the Cisco Virtual Private Network (VPN) technology, which supports secure remote access computing. Broadband service providers like Davnet deploy the wireless network infrastructure in public places, to meet mobile business users' demands for a high level of security, broadband speeds and ease of connection."

"Davnet's Business Development Manager Daniel Noble said, These hot spots are part of a network which will eventually cover the whole of Singapore. Davnet is committed to providing seamless end-to-end broadband solutions so that business can be conducted anywhere, anytime. We believe wireless broadband connectivity is going to take personal computing and PDAs to a new level of use and application."