SkyPilot Networks, a broadband wireless equipment vendor, this week is announcing that it has chosen Fujitsu Microelectronics America's WiMAX system-on-a-chip to power a WiMAX mesh solution SkyPilot has under development for a planned launch next year.

SkyPilot also is launching its first product effort in the burgeoning market for municipal wireless mesh networking. That platform, the SkyExtender DualBand, is a dual-band radio mesh architecture based on the company's synchronous mesh protocol. It operates in the unlicensed 5.8 GHz band and the 4.9 GHz band for public-safety communications, with dedicated access via 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, to avoid interference with the backhaul.

The WiMAX mesh announcement is likely the first of several such vendor announcements expected in the coming months, according to industry watchers.

“What we're doing now is a Wi-Fi metro mesh architecture that will evolve to WiMAX,” said Brian Jenkins, vice president of product management for SkyPilot Networks. “WiMAX will become the mesh backhaul, and Wi-Fi will provide the access to clients.”

Though many in the WiMAX community envision WiMAX access to end users, some network operators like the idea of bringing WiMAX to the metro backbone and leveraging Wi-Fi in the access realm, where a wealth of Wi-Fi clients already exist.

“We will continue to evolve our backbone to WiMAX, but [802.11b Wi-Fi] to the end users will be around for a while, and maybe forever,” said Chuck Haas, founder, president and CEO of MetroFi, a builder and operator of municipal wireless networks that is using SkyExtender DualBand system in deployments in the cities of Santa Clara and Cupertino in California.

WiMAX mesh might represent the future direction of municipal mesh networks, but dual-band Wi-Fi-based architectures also are a step up from earlier single-band metro mesh architectures. “You really can't use one radio for access and for backhaul as well; you need a second radio,” Haas said

While other dual-band solutions have begun to emerge, SkyPilot also claims an economic edge, with a cost of deployment of about $1800 per node, which the company says is at least half the cost of other dual-band products, and appeals to muni wireless economics under pressure from increasing competition.

“We have to sell broadband for $20, and that's the reality of the situation,” Haas said.