MCLEAN, Va., Jan. 9, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) has been selected by the city of Corpus Christi, Texas to provide a city-wide broadband wireless infrastructure and an automated meter reading system that will streamline services for city workers and make their processes more efficient.
As part of the broadband wireless program, Northrop Grumman's Information Technology (IT) sector will design and install a broadband wireless system that will provide coverage across Corpus Christi, for city government and public access.
"This broadband wireless network is one of the largest city-wide deployments to date in the United States and will demonstrate the 'digital city' concept whereby government employees and the public have wireless high-speed data access anywhere in the city," said Hugh Taylor, president of Northrop Grumman IT's Commercial, State and Local Solutions business. "Our experience building wireless networks and our systems integration expertise puts Northrop Grumman in an excellent position to meet the needs for this project."
In addition, as part of this project, public safety applications will provide more information to the police, fire, and emergency management services field units to allow them to send and receive live situational videos to and from their command centers.
One of the first applications this system will support is the automated water meter reading system, which collects water meter data daily over the wireless network and provides it to the city's customer information and billing system. This automated system removes the need for field personnel to individually read each meter every month, providing significant savings to the city.
As part of this project, Northrop Grumman will exchange approximately 50 percent of the city's existing 150,000 water and gas meters with automated meter reading (AMR) meters and retrofitting remaining meters with AMR.
"Corpus Christi is taking a technological leap forward in deploying a ubiquitous wireless broadband network for use by all city departments and the public," said Ogilvie Gericke, chief information officer for Corpus Christi. "We expect to derive cost-saving efficiencies based on anytime, anywhere access to the information our field workers need to serve our citizens. Virtually every department has identified ways we can use the power of this network to do our jobs better and lead us to a new era of service and citizen/government connectivity."
In addition to the network and AMR deployment, Northrop Grumman is conducting a network and information technology study for the city to ensure their capability to support the wireless broadband system and future applications.
The total value of the broadband wireless project, the IT study and the AMR project is approximately $23 million to Northrop Grumman.
Northrop Grumman's teammates for the automated meter reading and wireless network projects include Hexagram, Inc., Cleveland; National Metering Services, Inc., Kearny, N.J.; and Tropos Networks, Sunnyvale, Calif.
Northrop Grumman Information Technology, headquartered in McLean, Va., is a trusted IT leader and premier provider of advanced IT solutions, engineering and business services for government and commercial clients. The company's technological leadership spans such areas as homeland security solutions, health IT solutions, secure wireless, cyber and physical assurance, IT and network infrastructure, managed services, knowledge management, modeling and simulation and geospatial intelligence solutions.