Led by Norfolk County Council and funded by the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) the GBP1.1m project is the largest community wireless broadband network in the UK and will evaluate the impact and potential of mobile technology, offering free mobile Internet access for public sector employees, the business community and the general public.

The network covers a large area of Norwich city centre, as well as key sites around the city including business parks, the county hospital and the University of East Anglia - in all up to 30 square kilometres.

"This is the most significant outdoor Wi-Fi network in the UK to date," said Jim Baker, Telabria CEO and founder. "Not only does the sheer scale dwarf all other UK deployments, but the project aims to deliver fully mobile Internet access to both the public sector and the private citizen for free, a departure from network models elsewhere. We're delighted that our mSystem APM-300 mesh access point was chosen by Synetrix to be at the heart of the Norfolk wireless network, providing street-level Wi-Fi coverage on the scale required."

More than two hundred Telabria APM-300 dual radio mesh devices have been attached to street furniture such as lampposts to create the network, with the main network gateway on the roof of County Hall in the centre of the city. Nine 'clusters' of APM-300s are backhauled over WiMAX-class point-to-multipoint infrastructure to a 40Mbps Internet feed at County Hall. The network can be accessed by any Wi-Fi-equipped device including laptops, PDAs and web-enabled mobile phones.

"After careful assessment of the mesh product market, we chose the Telabria APM-300 as it not only presented the most technically competent solution for this project, but was also priced highly competitively," said Alex Jadavji, Chief Executive at Synetrix. "Working in close partnership with vendors on a project of this size is critical to its success, and Telabria has shown a clear ability to respond to both our needs and those of our client."

Public sector workers will be able to access the system at speeds up to 1Mbps and organisations including health, education, and emergency services will be considering a range of projects to help evaluate the network. The project is not allowed to compete with commercial broadband providers, the speed at which the general public may connect is rate limited to 256Kbps. Later this year, OpenLink will be extended to twenty rural locations in the district of South Norfolk .

Patrick Hacon, Chairman Norfolk County Council said: "We are very excited about the possibilities that Norfolk Open Link presents for the county. The pilot project will aim to harness the potential wireless technology can have in enhancing the delivery of our public services and stimulating business and private use of wireless technologies."

The Telabria mSystem APM-300 is a ruggedised, outdoor dual radio mesh device; one radio provides network access for any Wi-Fi-enabled device within range, while the second radio communicates with other neighbouring APM-300s to create a self-forming, self-healing mesh network of 'nodes' over which traffic passes to the nearest WiMAX backhaul point. The number of links, or 'hops', between mesh nodes is kept a minimum to reduce latency that can affect real-time applications such as VoIP and IP-CCTV applications.

Telabria has seen an increasing number of contract wins based on its innovative mesh products, and the company is currently building a network of distributors and resellers to service the rapidly growing number of international metro hotzone projects worldwide.