The East Bay Municipal Utility District (Oakland, California, U.S.) has begun deploying Motorola's (Schaumburg, Illinois, U.S.) Canopy wireless broadband technology to monitor data at its pumping plants, reservoirs, dams, water treatment plants and other sites.

Assisted by Dandin Group (Fremont, California), the East Bay Municipal Utility District began the first phase of deploying a Canopy wireless broadband system between Stockton and Pardee Ridge, California. One of the point-to-point links, 35 miles (56 km), set a distance record for deployment of a Canopy system.

“Motorola's Canopy technology is supplementing our microwave solutions and is proving to be a costeffective replacement for the outdated analog system that our information technology group finds too old and costly to continue to support,” said Kevin Wong, OP/NET system engineer with East Bay Municipal Utility District. “We are expanding the Canopy solution as our wireless WAN backbone with 20 additional point-to-point links using Canopy's 5.7GHz 20 megabit backhaul equipment. Our plans are to add access points at many East Bay locations and subscriber modules at over 200 remote sites.”

“East Bay's deployment of Canopy technology is an example of how enterprise markets can utilize the robust, secure and interference-tolerant wireless broadband technology to improve their high-speed data retrieval system between sites and help lower their capital costs,” said Tony Kobrinetz, vice president and general manager of Motorola's Canopy Wireless Broadband Group.

Launched in June 2002, the Canopy system is based on wireless broadband technology that provides for high-speed Internet access using the unlicensed UNII bands (5.25-5.35GHz or 5.725-5.825GHz). The system was designed to provide “last mile” high-speed data access for customers previously underserved or who live in locations where infrastructure and return on investment previously has been unattainable.
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