VERIZON HEADS TO RESERVATION

Verizon Avenue, usually known for marketing broadband to urban areas, is stepping out of character by setting up a small Wi-Fi network at the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Reservation in Washington's Cascade Mountains.

The carrier is using Wi-Fi technology and a Cisco Systems router to serve a tiny market of only 20 families at the remote reservation, who normally would live on the wrong side of the digital divide.

If the notion of an urban-focused LEC suddenly connecting remote communities sounds strange, Vice President of Western Sales Kevin Kirkland insists it's a natural continuation of its business plan.

“Anytime we find an area in which [sister division] Verizon Online has no plans to — or is unable to — deploy service, we consider that a potential market,” Kirkland said. “Our specialty is deploying in small insular communities. Usually those wind up being apartment complexes, but in this case it was a reservation.”

The Sauk-Suiattle network uses a Wi-Fi hot spot located in the reservation's community center that links to antennas on the roofs of the 20 homes nearby. The homes are wired with Ethernet cable hooked into the directional antennas on their roofs, effectively creating a point-to-multipoint network that extends the range of the connections but allows for Wi-Fi connectivity closer to that of the hot spot itself.

Verizon Avenue hopes to make its project on the Sauk-Suiattle reservation a model for bringing broadband access to areas far from the reach of DSL. Instead of billing each individual subscriber, the carrier is charging the tribe a flat bulk rate for the T-1 connection that feeds the hot spot and the routing equipment that manages the network.

To help set up the private community network, the reservation received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The tribe in turn charges its individual members for the service.

While Verizon Avenue will accept kudos for bringing broadband to underserved areas, it's also doing so for a profit. Even in a community as small as 20 families, the savings associated with creating a community network with a single broadband connection allows Verizon Avenue a profit margin while severely reducing Internet costs for the individual subscribers.

“Before we set up this network, people were getting mediocre dial-up connections — now they're getting a Meg for half the cost,” said Elstun Lauesen, technology director for the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians-Economic Development Corporation, the organization that negotiated with Verizon to bring Wi-Fi to the reservation.

ATNI represents 53 area tribes with the Sauk Suiattle being among the smallest. It now has a model to use Wi-Fi to bring broadband to tribes with more than 6000 families that are just isolated as the Sauk-Suiattle. Some of those plans involve using companies like Verizon Avenue. Others require communities setting up their own telecom utilities and drawing from the Universal Service Fund.

“If you have a concentrated community like a reservation, a provider can treat the whole community like a wholesale customer,” Lauesen said. “In that way a small community network is very similar to a corporate VPN.”