Wireless Internet opens communications in small Iowa communities

Small communities, no matter where they are, want high-speed Internet connectivity. AiroLink Communications is betting on that demand as it rolls out a 900 MHz fixed broadband wireless offering to rural Iowa communities that could have as few as 600 residents.

The start-up company has launched in Mount Vernon and Lisbon, Iowa and is negotiating with five to seven more communities to offer a 900 MHz non-line-of-sight service built on WaveRider’s Last Mile Solution technology.

Despite appearances to the contrary, non-line-of-sight is the essential ingredient in providing service to these communities, said AiroLink President Jeff Niemeier.

“People think Iowa’s flat. It’s not,” he said. “There are a lot of communities that are very hilly. There are a lot of towns that are older that have a lot of foliage, especially as you get toward the Mississippi River.”

Niemeier said the smaller towns offer no competitive alternative to the service that he can set up in about a month, thus he finds that the community governments are generally amenable to his proposition.

“I try to lease space on top of their water towers, and I give the city anywhere from 5% to 10% of my profits,” he said.

This barter, he said, is important because “some of these communities are small, 600 people to 1000. Because I’m not sure of the demand, I like to work on the percentage basis.”

The AiroLink service doesn’t just draw the attention of governments and residents. As word leaks out, incumbent telephone and cable operators revise plans to start their own service delivery.

“As soon as they hear I've been in there talking to the city council, they get scared that I’m going to come in there and take up all the user base,” he said. “One thing I can do as a wireless provider is say, ‘I can be here in 30 days.’ It wakes them up.”

While confident he can go toe-to-toe with DSL providers, Niemeier admitted that cable provider Mediacom has a tougher sell with its cable modem product. Still, he said, those wired providers have to invest big money in their network upgrades.

“It costs me maybe $1000 to put in a radio or a tower, instead of $60,000 to $100,000 plus the time to do it [for wired providers],” he said.

Niemeier’s biggest costs are in the home, where he provides a modem and an indoor antenna that can be self-installed.

“That’s another reason why I picked WaveRider. They have an indoor antenna. I have customers that come up and sign up with my service and I hand them the radios in the box and they go home and do self-installation,” he said.

AiroLink has 80 customers, although Niemeier expects that number to soon hit triple digits. Packages range from a base $39.95 service for 350 to 384 kb/s of download speeds to $49.95 for average speeds of 600 to 900 kb/s. Packages run $49.95 and $59.95 for small businesses and work-at-homers.

The biggest limitation of the 900 MHz technology, he said, is its top speed of 1.5 Mb/s, which, while fast enough for residential and small business users, leaves something to be desired for bigger businesses.

“I may do a 2.4 GHz point-to-point link with [bigger businesses] to give them their higher speed,” he said. “For the masses, the residential user and the 5-to-10 people offices in these smaller communities, the WaveRider solution is ideal.”