WiFi mesh startup Strix Systems Inc. has scored one of the largest multi-city 802.11 municipal deals yet announced, working with an NTT Group (NYSE: NTT) subsidiary to unwire a hundred cities in Japan over the next couple of years. (See Strix Wins at NTT West.)

The Calabasas, Calif.-based firm is working with NTT West and Network Value Components (NVC) to deploy the network, which will use Strix's Access/One OWS and IWS modular mesh products to provide voice, video, and data services in both indoor and outdoor settings. Nan Chen, Strix's VP of marketing, says the network could cover "about 50 million people" by the time it is completed, although he's not sure which cities NTT plans to include in the deployment.

Unlike many of the municipal deployments of mesh networking in the U.S., Chen says the NTT rollout will have more of an enterprise focus at least to begin with. The goal is to primarily cover business customers as well as residential," says Chen. "There are a lot of businesses that really wanted to have managed services."

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— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung