In the statement, Fire Chief David Costa said firefighters will be able to use the system to download data about hazardous materials in a building, as well as floor plans and other structural details.

Operation of the network has been nearly flawless in tests, Hewitt said, noting that the network design and implementation was simpler than construction problems city officials ran into with attaching the routers.

The city had to design and contract out nearly every wireless router attachment, because the shoebox-size routers must withstand hurricane winds. Originally, the city wanted to attach the devices to public schools and other public buildings; It later found that such a move was involved and expensive and placed the hardware on locations rented from a utility pole provider.

"The construction on the project is what took us the most time," Hewitt said.

Providence began looking into the wireless mesh system when it learned that an older wireless network, running over Cellular Digital Packet Data, would be terminated. That network was terminated in February, and in the interim the city has been using Verizon Wireless' EV-DO, or Evolution Data Optimized, system, he said. The CDPD throughput was about 19.2Kbit/sec., compared with 300Kbit/sec. or more with the mesh network.