Wireless broadband taking hold throughout Maine

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Editor’s Note: This is the seventh report in a multipart series about the availability of broadband Internet service in Maine.

The latest form of wireless broadband Internet service to arrive in Maine is called Wi-Fi, which stands for “wireless fidelity.” Many airports, hotels, libraries and now even local communities, offer public access to Wi-Fi networks that beam a signal to a special card inserted into a laptop computer. In most instances, coverage extends out only a short distance – just a couple hundred feet or so. Locations that offer Wi-Fi service are known as hot spots, and they might charge users a daily or hourly fee, or they might operate free of charge.

Besides Wi-Fi, there are other forms of wireless broadband, which include long-range systems based on microwave technology.

In many respects, wireless broadband is perhaps the most exciting new development in the broadband arena. In August, the Federal Communications Commission will conduct an auction for new wireless broadband service licenses and the buildup for this pending auction is creating a substantial buzz.

Midcoast Internet Solutions in Rockland specializes in wireless broadband, although it offers phone line-based digital subscriber line broadband services along with enhanced DSL or ADSL services in many communities.

“We were one of the first companies doing wireless broadband on the East Coast and started that in 1997. We got into wireless broadband because we wanted to do things the phone company could not do,” says Jason Philbrook, president of Midcoast Internet Solutions.

Wireless broadband transmission equipment is installed on towers, church steeples and other high buildings or structures by Midcoast Internet Solutions.

“We consider Wi-Fi more properly suited for shorter range service where customers require mobile access from their notebook computers and security is not a high priority. We help provide Wi-Fi at ferry terminals, waterfronts and pubs to serve mobile businesspeople and travelers,” says Philbrook.

Midcoast Internet Services uses non-Wi-Fi equipment because it offers features and advantages that justify the higher cost to deliver broadband services to multitenant offices.

Many Internet service providers and wireless Internet service providers or WISPs statewide have been involved in the state’s ConnectME initiative and the Broadband Access Infrastructure Board’s (BAIB) activities. There has been a gradual acceptance of the fact that things would likely progress on their own as these ISPs and WISPs gradually expanded their coverage areas and met the state’s defined goals.

“[Together] we helped the BAIB avoid unnecessary regulation, while identifying and supporting a variety of minor helpful things the state could undertake to [quickly reach] the goals in general,” says Philbrook. “This included small steps the state could implement to organize or assist in the expansion of broadband coverage without too much complication or regulation.”

He credits Fletcher Kittredge of Great Works Internet in Biddeford for keeping the issue of how to best go about obtaining the fiber, in effect, the big broadband pipes necessary to distribute broadband services into rural towns on the front burner during the ConnectME meetings.

“Big universities and medium-sized or big businesses tend to use higher-end services that are available anywhere, but at a high cost relative to [residential] broadband,” says Philbrook. “That is what we use. We pay 5-digit prices to get massive broadband capacity into Rockland where we are based. It is not really an end-user broadband issue. But if more lower-priced fiber connected the towns, it would help reduce the cost of getting the big pipes for feeding broadband systems into rural towns.”

Philbrook is concerned that while the focus here is primarily on increasing broadband availability in more rural areas, the other important consideration is choice or competition.

“Towns that have already had broadband of some sort for a while will get more choices over time. DSL will overlap wireless and cable, wireless will overlap DSL, and cable, DSL and cable will overlap each other,” he says.

“We may even see a bit more fiber competing with other broadband technologies.”

A small company called RoamingWire Inc. has deployed Wi-Fi services in downtown Bangor and Southwest Harbor. Other towns which are exploring wireless broadband options include Bar Harbor, Greenville and Newport, according to Mason Ham, a co-founder of RoamingWire. Exactly how many companies and communities statewide are either operating Wi-Fi services today or planning to do so soon is unknown.

“We are not actually trying to address the broadband gap per se. That is something that is just too big for a company of our size to do. We are a small, local Maine company that simply wants to offer an alternative service to the communities of Maine,” says Ham. “Put basically, not everyone needs to be connected all the time.”

At RoamingWire, the emphasis is on providing a wireless broadband connection which is portable, properly scaled for the kinds of services used most often by the pool of potential users, and available for users at specific locations rather than for users on the move between the sites in question. These are not true mobile broadband services, which cost a lot more.

“We have tried very hard to make connecting to the RoamingWire network as easy as possible. We find that people know what WiFi is, and they know how to do the basics,” says Ham.

The company’s business model involves working with community organizations and a set of revenue sharing agreements based on a roster of services which can be easily expanded over time for things like public safety networks.

“If we could put a hot spot in every town in Maine, we would. We have designed the system from the ground up to allow for that kind of [flexibility]. We personally don’t feel that ‘total’ coverage is a worthy goal. Better to continue to foster our communities, downtowns, and human interaction,” e-mails Ham. “Hot spots bring people together more than they move them apart if they are part of a community-based [solution].”

In June, with support from the Bar Harbor Communications and Technology Task Force (CTTF), among others, the Bar Harbor Town Council approved the purchase of equipment to deliver free Wi-Fi service at Agamont Park overlooking the harbor and at the Village Green right in the center of town, according to CTTF Chairman Brian Booher.

“We have been debating community wireless in CTTF meetings over the years and discussing what it could look like and how town government might support it – or not,” says Booher. “We agreed that putting up free wireless in those two parks could be done very cheaply with infrastructure that the town already owned. As such, we saw it as an opportunity to start the debate in Bar Harbor with a test deployment so people could experience community wireless first hand and make informed decisions about its future.”

Wireless broadband deployments are proceeding elsewhere on Mount Desert Island, including at least one deployment which is privately owned.

In addition to the wireless broadband services for homes and businesses outlined above, a whole new mobile wireless broadband market has opened up as so-called advanced 3G (Third Generation) cellular phone services and laptop PC cards are becoming more widespread. Verizon’s Broadband Access wireless network, for example, now covers more than 60 major metropolitan areas across the United States.

Subscribers can access these kinds of wireless broadband services via laptop PC cards costing $99.99 and up, as well as by simply connecting their laptop computers to their cell phones. Other competing wireless broadband services are available via Sprint Power Vision and Cingular BroadbandConnect, which, for example, advertises download speeds of 400 to 700 kbps, and projected upload speeds of 40 to 60 kbps.

Again, not all of these mobile broadband services are available in Maine, and if available, they are not accessible everywhere in the state.

Next: There is speculation that Verizon might sell its residential phone business in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, which could have enormous impact on broadband deployments in the region.