Making money on WiMAX locally

This is not an earth-shaking story, but it may be a harbinger of things to come. 4G Metro, a wireless network operator working with Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas-based Trinity Railway Express, will launch what may well be the first end-to-end broadband wireless service offered by a major U.S. public railway, this summer. The TRE network will benefit from a joint marketing and sales agreement between Nortel and Colubris Networks.

TRE is a cooperative public railway linking Fort Worth, Dallas and the DFW International Airport. The company is planning to offer its 5,000 daily passengers with high-speed wireless Internet access and a myriad of information and entertainment services, including breaking news and sports, local advertising and other video content presented on 27-inch LCD screens. 4G Metro is a privately owned wireless services company which will own and operate the network under a public/private partnership agreement with TRE. 4G Metro will use Nortel's Municipal Wireless Solution, including wireless mesh, WiMAX and optical technologies, to deliver integrated voice, data and multimedia to passengers throughout the 36-mile TRE route.

For more on the TRE experiment:
- see this Colubris press release