Houston County, Georgia completes wireless broadband testing
Houston County, Georgia (pop. 120,000) announced last week that they have successfully completed testing for their wireless broadband implementation. Houston County, Georgia (pop. 120,000) announced last week that they have successfully completed testing for their wireless broadband implementation.
I wrote about the planned rollout of this county-wide wireless broadband network last May after I met Matt Stone (chairman of the Houston County Wireless Committee) and Greg Richardson (National Mobility Practice Director for Siemens Business Services) at Eye for Wireless 2004 in San Francisco. I spoke to them again this week about the successful test. According to Matt and Greg, the technology performed very well and they were able to deliver 5Mpbs over a distance of 12.5 miles (20 km).
The Houston County Wireless Committee is keen on bringing county-wide broadband to schools, businesses, residents and local government. But like many counties, there are “dark spots”, that is places that have no broadband at all. In addition, many businesses, such as the defense contractors in the county are paying a significant amount of money for their T1 lines. These businesses could be paying a lot less if they had access to robust wireless broadband services.
To convince service providers that there is business to be made from delivering wireless broadband to the entire county, the Committee launched this test project and is spearheading efforts to ensure that fast broadband service will be available to everyone in the county. Indeed right after the test, the Committee received numerous inquiries from potential wireless service providers.
As I have seen over the past year, there are several models used by cities and counties for delivering broadband. Some own the network and act as the ISP (see for example Allegany County in Maryland and Chaska, Minnesota). In Finland, several municipal-owned energy companies deliver city-wide wireless broadband as an add-on to their services. Others prefer to build a passive network and lease out capacity, or encourage a service provider to deploy the network by easing regulations, becoming a key customer, etc. (see Cerritos, California’s network).
I’ve observed that where there is absolutely no broadband available and the need for economic growth is most pressing, the city or county will deploy the network itself and provide broadband service. Where the need is less pressing, the decision to become a “city carrier” depends in part upon whether there is a municipal-owned utility that has a fiber backbone that is easy to exploit. In a few places, regulations prohibit municipalities from acting as ISPs.
Other partners in the Houston County project are Intel and Alvarion. Houston County is using Alvarion’s BreezeAccess 5.8 GHz equipment. Note that this week, Alvarion launched its WiMAX platform – BreezeMAX – which means that it is shipping the first release of the product, the BreezeMAX 3500, to select early adopter customers, and is taking orders now for deliveries in the third quarter of 2004 and beyond.
The Alvarion announcement is very interesting because it could hasten the deployment of city and county-wide wireless broadband networks. I am posting an article in the Technologies section of Muniwireless on Alvarion’s new product.
Related posts:
Loading ...
