Closing in on the holy grail of citywide Wi-Fi -Israeli startup Wavion is promising a cheaper way to flood entire cities with wireless broadband.

Municipal wireless is still in its infancy, but new technology from Israel could give budding citywide networks the growth spurt they’ve been waiting for.

Just last month, Wavion, an Israeli company with offices in San Jose, Calif., introduced a new line of wireless access points that it claims can quadruple the coverage and capacity of existing metro Wi-Fi networks. (Access points, or APs, are the devices that connect wireless networks with the Internet and then broadcast a Wi-Fi signal for laptops and other devices to pick up.)

In order to cover a 20-square-mile area, says Wavion, just eight of its "spatially adaptive" APs are needed, as opposed to 25 conventional ones. That will translate into lower infrastructure costs for service providers, which could help goose along delayed citywide Wi-Fi projects.

By By Michal Lev-Ram, Business 2.0 Magazine writer-reporter

Full Story: http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/27/technology/wavion_thirdscreen0627.biz2/index.htm