Chibardun's secret is stick-to-itiveness

To Rick Vergin, CEO of Cameron, Wis.-based Chibardun Telephone Cooperative, WiMAX technology is ultimately a Band-Aid. And to borrow from the brand's jingle, Vergin is stuck on that Band-Aid 'cuz his Band-Aid's stuck on him.

“Outside our service territory, there are a lot of areas that won't get fiber for a lot of years,” he said. “WiMAX is a good alternative. It's a Band-Aid like DSL is a Band-Aid. The ultimate thing for us is to get fiber to the home, but until that happens, we need something in between.”

Chibardun, (pronounced Sh-bard-dun) is reaching the homes scattered through northwest Wisconsin in several ways through its CTC subsidiary. WiMAX is one of them, and it is the fastest-growing part of the company's business.

CTC was launched in 1996 as one of the first facilities-based competitive local exchange carriers. It was a C Block winner back in 2002 and now has five towers running broadband wireless over mostly the 700 MHz band with a little 900 MHz mixed in for good measure. The company bundles its broadband access service with its wireless voice-over-IP service for $44.95 per month and calls it Access Plus. Not WiMAX, not wireless or wireline — just access.

But WiMAX technology has nonetheless put a smile on Vergin's face. “It's so much better than the wireless broadband we were offering before. It's night and day,” he said.

While the technology he uses now from SOMA Networks may not officially be WiMAX either, it is close enough. CTC went operational with SOMA's 700 MHz band FlexMAX system last August. While the broadband speeds of 1.5 Mb/s download and 256 kb/s upload can't match the cable or DSL access technologies it runs up against, Vergin said he is very happy with the service, especially the coverage and the ability to support VoIP.

“We didn't go looking for a WiMAX solution,” Vergin said. “We were looking for a wireless broadband solutions that had the capacity for VoIP without a tremendous bandwidth cost.” He added that Soma's proprietary method significantly reduces bandwidth consumption.

“We've got 12 MHz on the 700 band, and it doesn't take much to get used up,” he said. His company plans to bid for more spectrum in the upcoming 700 MHz auction. His current block cost him approximately $32,000 compared with the $1 million paid in the AWS auction.

CTC tried serving some areas with non-WiMAX wireless broadband equipment but could not get it to pass a site survey when 90% of locations failed to get sufficient coverage. The same site survey with SOMA's FlexMAX systems passed 90% of the locations.

“It's pretty solid,” Vergin said. “You can pretty much draw a ten-mile circle around the tower, and there will be enough signal to get inside the house.”

There aren't many rural providers offering WiMAX-based services. Vergin thinks that may change as more bid on spectrum in the next auction. Still, he's unsure how stuck on this Band-Aid he is and is eyeing more 700 MHz spectrum for a mobile wireless play as well. “It has such better propagation than the AWS frequency that if we are going to do a cellular play, it would be nice to operate two simultaneously,” he said.

Ultimately, more spectrum is needed. “We need to be able to offer three or four or five [megabits] and put several hundred subscribers on the system to drive the economics,” Vergin said. “Today, twenty users can start maxing out a system.“