Welcome to WiFi Country

In rural Arizona, in the small town of Golden Valley, population 7,500, the telephone company charges approximately $4,500 per month for a broadband T1 line. DSL connections are available, but only for computers located within a few thousand feet of the telephone switching station. Predictably, residents, businesses and even emergency service providers like the fire department, have to make do with slow dial-up connections. But that is changing, thanks to the installation of a wireless Internet or WiFi system in Golden Valley by SkyFrames Inc., Costa Mesa, Calif.

For years, the Golden Valley Fire Department relied on dial-up Internet service. “We felt lucky to have dial-up,” says Harold Nystedt, chief of the town’s fire department. Dial-up, of course, is slow. It’s so slow that when Fire Station 2 — located about four miles from the main station — wanted to send its reports to headquarters, it was easier to download the data to a disk for hand delivery. “The time lag in reporting was a big concern,” Nystedt says. “That was probably one of our biggest motivating factors in switching to wireless.”

As a member of the regional Hazardous Materials Unit, the Golden Valley Fire Department hopes the new WiFi connection will enable it to retrieve large HazMat files on the Internet and to file reports with the state more efficiently. WiFi speeds range from 400 to 800 kps — faster than DSL but slower than cable.

The connectivity issues faced by the Golden Valley Fire Department are typical of problems in rural areas. In North America, more than 20,000 rural communities lack broadband connections, according to Edward Bukstel, executive vice president of SkyFrames. These communities range in size from 200 to 8,000 people.

“The problem is massive,” Bukstel says. “Telephone companies won’t build fiber systems to connect a few hundred people. But rural areas need these connections. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, needs to send files to first responders about security issues such as potential attacks on chemical plants. But the files are so large that dial-up systems drop the connection during downloading.”

Another illustration of the problem concerns the nation’s airports. According to Bukstel, the Transportation Security Administration lacks broadband connections with nearly 300 of the nation’s 450 airports. Most of these airports are located in rural and near-rural areas underserved by broadband.

SkyFrames’ primary business strategy aims to fill this need by building so-called “WiFi hotspots” in rural communities. A hotspot begins with a Very Small Aperture Terminal or VSAT, a small dish that sends and receives information from satellites. On the ground, the VSAT connects by cable to a router and a set of wireless components.

This system in turn communicates with an antenna, usually placed on a nearby tower. The antenna is the access point. Computers and computer networks equipped to transmit and receive wireless data figuratively “plug into” the access point, which connects to the Internet via the VSAT and the satellite.

Building a hotspot costs approximately $65,000. A single hotspot can accommodate 2,000 to 3,000 subscribers paying $35 to $45 per month. A local Internet Service Provider or ISP installs the hotspot, sells the subscriptions, and sets up user systems. In Golden Valley, Ariz., High Speed Wireless serves as the ISP. Under this model, SkyFrames and AZ High Speed Access hope to cover their capital costs in a few years and generate a reasonable profit along the way.

According to Barry Wilkinson, co-owner of AZ High Speed Access, nearly 80 subscribers signed up for the Golden Valley service as soon as it was introduced.

The Golden Valley Fire Department, one of the first subscribers, pays no subscription fee. Instead, the department provided space for the WiFi antenna on its radio tower in exchange for a subscription. “Business is done differently in rural communities,” Bukstel says. “There is lots of bartering.”

According to Nystedt, the WiFi system has improved the fire department’s ability to send and receive reports. Eliminating dial-up has eliminated the problem of dropped connections. But problems remain. “The network between our office and main fire station works fine,” Nystedt says. “But our remote station uses a wireless connection to the server in the main station, and it hasn’t been as fast as we expected.”

Wilkinson says the slow connection stems from shortcomings in the fire department’s network, not the WiFi system. “The fire department is still working on its network,” he says. “So temporarily, we’ve set them up to run through our system. When their network is completed, they will see the faster speeds because they won’t have to go through our system.”

While no solution is perfect, SkyFrames’ new WiFi model may solve connectivity problems in rural areas underserved by broadband wires.