Tag Archives: Mass Transport

Kevin Fitzgibbons, Sr. Director of Business Development, Transportation Systems at Rajant Corporation

Kevin FitzgibbonsA veteran business development and channel marketing professional, Kevin Fitzgibbons brings deep industry expertise and experience to the transportation and municipal marketplaces with special focus on wireless technologies, network infrastructures and communications. Mr. Fitzgibbons’ breadth of experience has included positions in manufacturing, distribution and consumer services. These roles have given him a 360-degree view of the strategies, intelligence and sales skills required to effectively develop and close business at all levels of government – from local and state to national and international strategic accounts.

With an eye always on key performance metrics, Mr. Fitzgibbons has successfully mapped out communications strategies for municipalities large and small and managed all aspects of a city-wide network deployment. As senior director of business development, transportation systems, at Rajant Corporation, Mr. Fitzgibbons is responsible for creating plans and driving new business directives toward helping municipalities and governments advance their network and communications strategies. As such, he helps them enable mobility and support applications on their respective networks. Moving organizations into the smart transportation mode while obtaining a solid return on investment is what drives his enthusiasm daily.

Mr. Fitzgibbons is a regular presenter at industry conferences and forums, where he has shared his strategic and hands-on experiences with all levels of participants – from engineers in the field to CTOs in the boardroom.

Q: How did you get into the industry?

A: My first job in the wireless industry was for a distributor that sold a lot of different products. There I worked with 10 or 12 different broadband manufacturers, and we would combine and suggest different solutions for different projects and applications. My role was to help package them and communicate to all of our customers which wireless technology fit where, how they were supported and how they could solve different challenges.

At a point in my career, one market that seemed to open up significantly was transportation. It was an area in which cellular was no longer meeting the needs of that market and figuring out how to provide high-speed broadband to moving devices was a real challenge, because most of what broadband had been doing involved static applications. This created new issues for municipal and transportation markets.

When I started to work more on those kinds of applications, I learned about Rajant. It turned out that this unique and difficult challenge of delivering high-speed broadband to moving vehicles via private network is something that Rajant had been doing for 15 years, which took me aback.

I previously had worked with other manufacturers of mesh, but those solutions delivered a compromised version of what mesh could be. So when I heard of Rajant as a mesh company, I thought, I know how to compete against this – until I finally understood that theirs is truly mesh and is able to deliver all it promised. That changed a lot for me.

I was ultimately drawn to this technology because I saw in my experience more and more that we were going to need to deliver high-speed broadband – not just to fixed buildings or towers, but to a lot of devices and a lot of moving vehicles, and I thought Rajant was in great position to do that. I was a believer even before I accepted my current role with them.

Q: What do you enjoy most about your role?

A: I like that it’s consultative and gives me the opportunity to solve very challenging problems for customers. Our customers are companies trying to improve their business by running a number of applications or ramping up their existing network. They are trying to do big things, challenging things, and I like to be able to step in to help them solve their problems and implement something new that will really improve their business. Often, by the time a customer is ready for us, they’re dealing with something that is at a critical point – they absolutely must find a solution that works.

Q: What is your favourite thing about presenting to a live audience?

A: Generally, I like engaging in conversation with people more than presenting, but a presentation can be just another way to get a conversation started. With a presentation, I’m able to provide a group of people with information that is relevant to their business and show them something they may not have been aware of, or a way of doing something they may not have thought of. I enjoy educating people, and when I can tell active and engaged participants about creative network solutions that are relevant to and helpful for their businesses, it’s a great feeling.

Q: What motivates you?

A: I enjoy the level of work, and the engagement, but what I really enjoy is figuring things out. I meet with customers that have unique challenges, and often we are not the first ones they call. I truly enjoy the consultative, problem-solving aspect of listening to customers and understanding their needs, how we can improve their business and how we can grow revenue or optimize their investment together – and there is a real feeling of accomplishment when I can help them make their business better.

Q: Where is your favourite place in the world and why?

A: Well, I just got back from a few days in Yosemite, which was simply incredible. Before that, I was in Iceland, and saw the Northern Lights and did some hiking – it was spectacular. But really, my favourite place in the world is home. I am often traveling as part of my job, and the best thing in the world is coming home to see my wonderful family. After days or even weeks on road, in airports and hotels, there is nothing better.

Join Kevin in the Rajant webinar, “High Speed Mobile Networks for Integrated Transit, Public Safety and IoT”. Learn how to implement Kinetic Mesh communications systems for mass transportation systems, smart city initiatives and public safety within a city or region.  Register now!

 

How Can You Make a Smart City a Genius? A Look at Network Requirements for Critical Infrastructure and Services

by Kevin Fitzgibbons

For municipalities around the globe, making cities smarter is no longer a luxury or a long-term goal – it’s a necessity, and it needs to happen now.

There are plenty of applications and devices that can enable better city management, faster and safer mass transit, better equipped first responders and automated machine-to-machine functionality – but simply implementing these devices and applications is not enough. To fully leverage technology, smart cities must consider a wide-area, high-bandwidth private mobile network as much a part of their core infrastructure as roads and bridges and the electrical grid.

A fully optimized mobile network gives a city a number of critical capabilities:

• Quick-deploy ad hoc networks for public safety
• Wi-Fi in subway, trains and stations for passenger use as well as dynamic advertising and other revenue-generating opportunities
• Real-time CCTV for first responders and mass transit
• Intelligent traffic systems
• Energy and water management devices
• Payment and information kiosks
• Connected city infrastructure

However, the functionality of all of these applications is contingent on a network’s ability to communicate in real time. This demands a unified and secure network that connects in-motion and stationary people and assets and ensures reliable and continuous wireless communications between public transportation, command centers, public safety personnel and others.

You might be asking: Does this kind of network even exist? Will it be reliable in the event of an emergency? How secure is it? Is it adaptable to various needs and applications? Is it scalable and flexible?

One communications network that meets and exceeds all of a smart city’s requirements is Rajant’s Kinetic Mesh.

This is a type of wireless network that is truly mobile – a “make, make, make and never break” approach establishes and maintains connections with every radio, or node, it sees to instantaneously route data via the best available traffic path and frequency. Each node serves as singular infrastructure, which enables all devices and the network itself to be mobile – it can move around a city with no loss of connectivity.

The network enables the nodes to manage interference, working in concert with networking software to deliver data via the fastest available path; routes are evaluated on a packet-by-packet basis, with no need for input from the network administrator. The nodes seamlessly integrate with each other as well as cellular data/LTE networks and third-party satellite.

If one path becomes unavailable for any reason – such as power loss – the network routes around it, eliminating any downtime. It is not uncommon for a node to have several hundred peer connections, giving it the ability to use any link at any time. This allows Kinetic Mesh to be scalable; the more nodes in a network, the better the performance.

It’s also highly secure; Kinetic Mesh offers the same type of encryption that wireless clients require for WiFi as well as end-to-end encryption. When encrypted information flows through the mesh and comes out another node, it stays encrypted all the way through, and is not decrypted until it is delivered to its final destination, ensuring privacy.

At each hop in the network, Kinetic Mesh provides a per-hop authentication for each packet, as well as secure authentication of message. This detects whether data has been tampered with while ensuring a packet of information received by a node came from a trusted peer – protecting from a type of cyber-attack called packet injection, when attackers try to “throw” packets into the network to disrupt traffic.

Despite the immense amounts of data now at our fingertips, we’ll never be able to truly predict the future, but using Kinetic Mesh as a communications network for a city means all devices and applications are always connected, increasing overall network redundancy and ensuring continuous functioning of applications such as emergency services, water and electricity, transit and traffic systems – even the event of a natural or manmade disaster.

Does this sound like something your city or municipality could use?

To learn more how Kinetic Mesh is fulfilling the needs of smart cities by ensuring mission-critical applications never fail, join us for a webinar on how to implement a Kinetic Mesh communications systems for mass transportation systems, smart city initiatives and public safety within a city or region. I’ll cover current network infrastructure shortcomings, an analysis of key applications that will make cities smarter and more resilient, and the significant role mobility plays in today’s smart city and transportation environment.