SCIENCE

To preserve the environment and prevent disasters caused by flooding, the South Korean government is undertaking a two billion dollar restoration project of the country’s four major rivers – the Han River, the Yeongsan River, the Nakdong River and the Seomjin River – and surrounding recreational areas. With funding from the government, South Korea’s Water Resource Management Corporation has selected Daelim I&S, the country’s fourth largest system integrator, with Global Telecom as the distributor, to deploy Firetide wireless infrastructure solutions for the “4 Rivers” restoration project. When completed in 2012, Firetide’s multiservice wireless infrastructure will provide a sensor network for water level, temperature and pollution measurement; a video surveillance network to monitor the dams; and public Wi-Fi service for adjacent riverside parks.

“We selected Firetide because no other company offers the high performance, multiservice wireless network infrastructure capable of reliably covering such a large area and securely supporting the concurrent transmission of real-time video, voice and data,” said Mr. Song Choong II, the ‘4 Rivers Restoration’ project manager for Daelim I&S. “We are also impressed with Firetide’s experience, knowledge and track record in providing wireless infrastructure solutions for many demanding applications such as the Seoul Subway and other ‘ubiquitous city’ projects throughout South Korea.”

The four major rivers are over 240 miles in length combined. To cover this area, more than 200 Firetide MIMO and non-MIMO mesh nodes along with 300 cameras from Sony, Axis Communications and Samsung will be deployed to support the sensor and video surveillance applications. In addition, free public Wi-Fi service will be provided in adjacent parks using Firetide’s MIMO-based wireless access points and customer premise equipment (CPEs).

To date, Firetide has provided most of the wireless network infrastructure used in South Korea’s ‘u-City’ government-supported programs to bring ubiquitous digital services to residents, tourists, employees and businesses of South Korean cities. In addition, Firetide is providing its wireless technology for other non ‘u-City’ projects such as the Seoul Subway and video surveillance projects throughout the country. As a result, according to the independent Digital Daily IT newspaper, Firetide holds 70% market share for wireless mesh networks in South Korea.

“Firetide has focused on providing a complete, high performance, multiservice wireless infrastructure to meet the rigorous demands of projects like South Korea’s ‘4 Rivers’ restoration that must support real-time video, voice and data applications,” said Bo Larsson, CEO of Firetide. “We expect to see an increasing demand for complete wireless solutions that can reliably support converging and concurrent multiservice applications, both indoors and outdoors.”