ABB, Zurich, Switzerland, has agreed to acquire Tropos Networks Inc., a Silicon Valley-based company that develops and markets wireless technologies and products for distribution area communication networks. The acquisition will expand ABB's communications systems offering for customers in the power, transportation, mining and public infrastructure sectors.
Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., Tropos employs 55 people. The company's wireless IP (Internet Protocol) broadband solutions focus on reliability, security and scalability, key characteristics for essential services in smart grid and other outdoor industrial applications. The Tropos portfolio extends ABB's existing offering of communications solutions for the power distribution sector. It also reinforces ABB's increased focus on the North American market and complements its global presence in utility and industrial communications.
ABB said in a press release that as power grids and other critical infrastructure become increasingly reliant on automation, demand for cost-effective, reliable and secure communication solutions is growing. Communications play a critical role in realizing the efficiency improvements that can be achieved by automation and improved resource allocation. Details
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Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.