The Italian Province of Brescia will use a Cisco wireless solution based on mesh technology to deliver wireless broadband connectivity and Internet Protocol services to its rural communities.

The Province of Brescia will use a Cisco Outdoor Wireless solution to deliver a variety of online services to the municipalities of the region, ranging from simple Internet access for citizens to electronic procurement and online applications for businesses. The Cisco Outdoor Wireless solutions, which include a broad range of wireless devices and centralized management and security components, will help the province achieve its vision of being able to deliver a wide variety of IP services over a single converged network. The new network will help Brescia grow the services sector of its economy and help improve the quality of life for citizens by providing them with access to online services and mobile applications.

“Attempts by companies to grow their service offerings have been restricted by the fact that more than half of the province does not have broadband access. Cisco’s mesh technology has provided us with a reliable, scalable and easy to deploy solution,” said Raffaele Gareri, chief information officer, Province of Brescia. “We believe that through the public and private partnership we will see significant economic gains. We estimate that our initial investment of €2 million, could deliver a positive financial return of €139 million within six years,” he cotinued.

Brescia consists of a large number of disparate communities in a predominantly mountainous region, making it expensive for traditional carriers to wire the region for broadband. Cisco’s wireless mesh technology helps Brescia overcome the problem by using Cisco Aironet 1500 Series mesh access points, which build a flexible wireless infrastructure and helps reduce dependency on a wired network. The mesh deployment is expected to deliver broadband services to 120 towns, with plans to extend the service to 210 towns during phase two of the project.

The network is managed by a private telecommunications company, but owned by the local public administration.

One month ago, the Italian province of Trento has awarded Alcatel-Lucent a contract to supply and integrate the first urban WiFi network in Trento, Italy.