Cities Without Limits: How Wireless Is Galvanizing Small-Town America

Ottawa Wireless — Grand Haven, Mich.

The lakeshore town of Grand Haven, Mich., was never what you would call a hotbed of excitement. Cradled among the beaches and sand dunes that make up the Lake Michigan coastline, this sleepy tourist community spans just 5.8 square miles and is home to fewer than 12,000 year-round residents. Designated Coast Guard City USA by Congress in 1998 in recognition of its annual summer festival celebrating the efforts of the maritime service, Grand Haven's other claim to fame is its Musical Fountain, a synchronized ballet of water, light and music built in 1962 that remains the largest attraction of its kind in the world. Boasting 32 600-watt subwoofers, 14 power amplifiers and about a mile and a half of cable for a total system output of 130 dB, the Musical Fountain was Grand Haven's crowning technological achievement — until July 29, 2004, at least.

On that summer day, local wireless Internet service provider Ottawa Wireless announced the completion of an end-to-end Wi-Fi deployment blanketing the entirety of Grand Haven, creating a truly citywide hot spot. “It's the last place you'd expect to see [citywide Wi-Fi service], and I think that makes it really neat for the community,” said Tyler van Houwelingen, Ottawa Wireless' founder and CEO. “The other day we had a couple of grandmas come in and sign up. It's one of those things you can see having a real impact.”

Van Houwelingen was born and raised in Grand Haven. The son of Tony van Houwelingen, president of the city-owned power utility Ottawa Electric (and now president of Ottawa Wireless as well), he studied electrical engineering at the University of Michigan, subsequently spending three years at Intel before traveling to Europe to earn an international MBA from Spain's IESE Business School. He ended up staying in Madrid for five years, working as a telco strategic technology advisor for McKinsey & Co. before founding his first wireless ISP, Azulstar, in 2002.

“We knew the capability was there to cover a city and we had the pieces of the building blocks in place, but we could never get a city to bite — to say, ‘Yeah, go ahead, trounce all over my infrastructure,’” van Houwelingen said. So he left Madrid and returned home, looking to capitalize on his family connections to convince Grand Haven city leaders that both the time and place were right for citywide Wi-Fi.

“Both my father and his father worked for some of the companies we had to partner with — they knew everybody here,” van Houwelingen said. “At that time, citywide Wi-Fi wasn't in anybody's mind at all. A lot of people thought it was a crazy idea. Those connections were fundamental to getting this off the ground.”

Civic leaders eventually gave their blessing, with the finished network taking just under a year to build. After several fits and starts, Ottawa ended up installing about 300 Wi-Fi access points and point-to-point radios, with backhaul to a fiber-optic Internet connection via Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Proxim's Tsunami MP.11a point-to-multipoint equipment. “The first 20 or 30 ways we tried to do it didn't work,” van Houwelingen admitted. “It ended up being a lot more difficult than we ever thought. On top of that, even here, where we knew everybody, we still had to go in front of the planning commission multiple times and deal with every concern about antennas. There are so many different ways you could do this, but only one or two ways that really work. Rights of way is the bigger issue moving forward once you've got the magic formula.”

What's compelling about Ottawa's solution is how much it conforms to the contours of Grand Haven itself — in addition to access throughout the city, the network extends service up to 15 miles offshore into Lake Michigan, an enormous benefit to boaters and perfect for a city that's home to about a dozen marinas. Ottawa also provides service to nearby Yogi Bear Campground, enabling outdoor types to surf the Web while guarding against bears out to steal their pic-a-nic baskets.

“The hot city model really does work,” van Houwelingen said. “We've been pleasantly surprised with the number of tourists connecting to the network immediately. We've seen much higher numbers than we thought. Between the tourists coming in and the boating applications, it fits really well.”

According to Grand Haven City Manager Pat McGinnis, local officials have significant plans for the service: A proposal to install fiber linking City Hall's main network with a nearby community center has already been scrapped in favor of a far more inexpensive Wi-Fi connection, and police and other agencies are exploring how wireless communications can improve their efforts as well.

“The network just got ramped up, and being government, we lag behind — it's expected of us,” McGinnis said. “[Wi-Fi] is still infiltrating how we think and how we can do things more effectively and cheaply. We're just scratching the surface of what this means operationally.”

With wireless Internet access as cheap as $19.99 a month and citywide voice over IP in beta tests, Ottawa Wireless poses a real threat to the traditional service provider model. Infrastructure is already in place in several other west Michigan cities, and the company is in discussions to license its solution to other locations across the U.S.

“When we were still deploying in new neighborhoods, people would say, ‘Thank goodness — I hate that bleepity-bleep phone company’ or ‘I hate that bleepity-bleep cable company,’” van Houwelingen said. “It's not hard getting customers from these guys as long as you have a good offer and a good price. People place a lot of value on having service in their homes, their offices and wherever they want. It's ubiquitous connectivity, and people really like that.”
— Jason Ankeny

M-33 Access — Rose City, Mich.

All Glenn Wilson wanted was peace, quiet and a dial-up connection. What he got was the largest contiguous wireless Internet grid on the planet.

Wilson, founder of the mobile applications software development firm Custom Software, relocated from Colorado to Rose City, Mich., in late 1998 with aspirations of easing into retirement. “I just wanted to build my little den to program and design some software, and I needed an Internet connection,” he said. “Instead, I went through pure hell.” After discovering that access in this rural, one-stoplight town in northern Lower Michigan (population: about 650) was limited solely to dial-up service available through the local library, Wilson attempted to sign up, only to learn that he was at the tail end of a 32-person waiting list — and that bureaucratic red tape meant the library couldn't add any more modems, either.

“I got frustrated and said, ‘Just activate it or I'll build the biggest damn network you've ever seen,’” Wilson recalled. “[The library] said, ‘Oh, would you? We'd really appreciate it.’”

So in 1999 Wilson became his own de facto service provider, running a dedicated Internet line between his house in Rose City and his wife's family's home in Mio and dubbing the venture M-33 Access in honor of the state highway connecting the two towns. Soon residents in nearby Hale began requesting access as well, but again Wilson ran into a brick wall when he learned that no interconnectivity agreement existed between area providers GTE and CenturyTel, requiring that they route service through two other northern Michigan cities at a cost of $18.50 per mile per month, or about $72,000 annually.

“I said, ‘You can't be serious — even if I turned on 1000 modems over there, I can't oversell it that much to make up the money,” Wilson said. “[CenturyTel] told me, ‘Well, sir, that's all we can do.’ I said, ‘Listen, you really don't want to give me that answer. You really don't want this to happen.’ They said, ‘We could really care less if you bring bandwidth into Hale.’” (Sensing a pattern here?)

Recognizing that landline connectivity was no longer financially or technologically sound, M-33 Access began exploring other options. “Even though wireless was still in its infancy, I decided to roll the bones and go with wireless instead of fiber,” said Wilson, who now serves as M-33's president. “I built a couple of towers, put my modems in and ordered a circuit from CenturyTel, just like anybody else. I put my box right next to their building, ran an antenna up and shot it over here. There it was. Now we have 50 or 60 towers.”

M-33 Access built out its network in piecemeal fashion, essentially swapping free wireless Internet service in exchange for residential land where it could set up repeater locations. The company now serves more than 11,000 customers across rural Michigan, with a network that stretches into 15 counties and covers about 12% of the state's land; to the best of Wilson's knowledge, it's the largest consecutive wireless network of its kind anywhere in the world.

Earlier this year, M-33 contracted to serve virtually every public school in the northern half of the state's Lower Peninsula, borrowing $1.3 million from the Michigan Broadband Development Authority to complete the project, which will save the schools about $1 million in access fees over the next five years. A number of law enforcement agencies and hospitals are connected to the network as well, prompting county officials to declare M-33 an “essential service” on par with police and paramedics.

“The biggest problem when you're a WISP is dealing with all the regulatory stuff,” Wilson said. “The city got tired of dealing with me, so they made me exempt — they want this stuff out there, and the only way to do it without breaking their zoning laws is to make me exempt. But they're not just going to go out and make everyone an essential service. We have a huge network, and everyone depends on us. It's not strictly business here, and that's the formula that's going to make us more successful than everyone else.”

County officials agree that high-speed service is imperative to the region's future, said Al Derocher, Oganaw County's building and zoning administrator. According to Derocher, the wireless Internet is already enabling county employees to connect with other Michigan lawmakers and track legislative decisions, changes and innovations across the state. “You're able to really see what's going on out there — it's a wonderful thing,” he said.

M-33 Access' service is not yet available at Derocher's home, however. “It makes me to sick to go home at night and use the dial-up service there,” he said. “You click on a button, go make a sandwich and hope you've got something on the screen when you come back.”

All in all, not bad for a guy looking forward to retirement. “It's really weird,” Wilson said. “You think, ‘I did this all because I got upset because I couldn't get a dial-up account?’”
— Jason Ankeny

Maverick Wireless — Benton County, Wash.

David Schmelke's latest pitch sounds a lot like the old punch line, “I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.”

The former director of wireless data for T-Mobile USA has resurfaced as the founder and president of start-up Maverick Wireless, which recently launched Wi-Fi service in Benton County, Wash., in conjunction with the county's public utility district. The service, operating under the trademarked name “Citywide WiFi,” allows users to access the Internet at 128 kb/s, 512 kb/s or 1 Mb/s across a wide swath of Benton County, which is located in south central Washington state along the Oregon border.

“It seemed to me that there were other markets to go after other than the traveling business users,” Schmelke said. “We had a list of seven questions that we asked before we launched this thing, and one of them was, ‘Can this technology be sold to the average consumer in this market?’ Our very first customer was literally a gray-haired lady.”

According to the terms of Maverick's Citywide program, the company helped Benton County officials set up the network and operate as the service provider. But don't call it a wireless ISP. According to Schmelke, anyone can throw up an access point and call itself a WISP; plus, Maverick doesn't offer Web hosting like most ISPs do. The company's plan is more cooperative, relying on local governments not only to fund much of the initial buildout (depending on the particular model) but also to act as a partner in service. In exchange, Maverick turns over about 20% of the bandwidth to the city for its own use and shares monthly service revenue.

“Coordinated efforts will lend themselves to better success,” Schmelke said. “We thought it was important to provide everything the community needs.”

And like all communities, Benton County's needs are unique: The nearby Hanford Nuclear Site houses both a large nuclear power facility as well as a massive cleanup site, drawing an extraordinary amount of brainpower to the area.

Keeping that type of user in the area will become more difficult as the cleanup winds down, however. “The sun is setting and all of that government funding is going to go away, and they don't have the technical base to keep that highly trained population there,” Schmelke said.

While the Benton County project is generating Maverick its initial attention, the company is thinking big. Schmelke, who left T-Mobile just as the carrier was getting its Wi-Fi hot spots off the ground, wants to roll out Maverick's model nationwide — and not just in largely rural areas that have limited broadband options, either. “We are already in discussions with full municipal deployments in what I would call a tier-one city,” he said.

The Maverick model's success hinges on convincing local burghers that operating a citywide Wi-Fi network is slightly more difficult than attaching a Wi-Fi router to their DSL modems and firing up the laptop. Like many of the most advanced fiber-to-the-premises projects in the wireline world, many municipalities are venturing into Wi-Fi service as a kind of community service and going it alone.

“Some communities think they can do it themselves,” Schmelke said. “But you can't get over a learning curve by throwing $500,000 at it, launching it and wondering why no one is on it.”

One of the major reasons the company thinks it can succeed is the low penetration rate it needs to make its business model work. In most scenarios, Maverick plans to capture slightly less than 10% of the users it can reach. Even with those rates, Schmelke claims municipalities can recover their costs in less than two years.

“In general, we do revenue-sharing with the community on the back end,” he said. “They can justify the investment that way. Also, in this model those customers are keeping their money in the community.”
— Vince Vittore

Verizon Avenue — Sauk-Suiattle Indian Reservation, Wash.

The Sauk-Suiattle Indian Reservation consists of a cluster of about 20 homes and a community center located in Washington's Cascade Mountains. It's not the typical market for Verizon Avenue, a branch of the largest U.S. local telco that typically focuses on providing high-speed Internet access service to multi-dwelling units in large urban areas. But add in an umbrella organization — the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians-Economic Development Corp., an aggressive technology advocate that represents 6000 families in 52 tribes spread across seven states — and you've got the critical mass that Verizon Avenue craves.

“It really started when we attended an event and we were introduced to ATNI,” said Kevin Kirkland, vice president of western sales for Verizon Avenue. “They said they work to bring technology recommendations to their tribes, and they had tribes that were begging for broadband services. We said we'd be happy to serve them if they met the requirements of our MDU model. We weren't doing this just to be nice. This wasn't a giveaway.”

Fitting a 20-home dot on the map into the Verizon Avenue big-city MDU model fell to Elstun Lauesen, technology director for ATNI-EDC, who is trying to give each tribe in the association what he calls “a metro-equivalent environment.” For the Sauk-Suiattle, that consisted of bringing a traditional T-1 line to the community center, which also houses an omni-directional Wi-Fi antenna that serves all 20 houses. It helps that every house, which is equipped with an antenna and one Ethernet jack, is within a 1500-foot radius of the community center. It also helped that the tribe had no broadband options before the Wi-Fi network was set up.

“This was a tribe that was starting from a limited base, and in a lot of ways that's an ideal environment — if you're starting out with nothing, you are at an advantage,” Lauesen said, noting that if a tribe has no significant data infrastructure, they also have no legacy equipment to integrate. “Why go through the feudal economy of POTS to get to the post-industrial age?”

As part of the arrangement between ATNI-EDC and Verizon Avenue, the association buys Internet connectivity in bulk from the carrier and redistributes service to member tribes based on their specific needs. In many cases, that involves a Wi-Fi connection for the last few thousand feet. For Verizon Avenue, the simplicity of dealing only with ATNI cinched the deal. “Instead of 500 billing relationships and getting retail revenue, we have one and get wholesale revenue,” Kirkland said.

Selecting the next tribe to receive broadband will be done by analyzing several requirements, including data transport, network distribution, user access and content. According to Lauesen, the next likely candidates include the Quileute tribe in La Push, Wash., whose land is home to both a Natural Resources Department bureau and a medical clinic. ATNI will use an access point and several hot spots around the community to solve the access and distribution issues.

While the affiliated tribes engage in a fair amount of interaction already, Lauesen is looking toward the day when all 52 are united in an online community. “Our vision is to create an Intranet among the portals and provide for horizontally integrated communication,” he said. “There are sources of content that are already in the can, so to speak. Most of the tribes have a shared need to get their services online. The second level is the community information side. Once they have this in place, they have the ability to inter-network. We think the payoff is going to be in the horizontal integration. The spade work is dealing with the vertical integration.”

Also on the drawing board is voice over IP, Lauesen said. “All of this is being built with the vision that people are going to be absolutely connected.”

For Verizon Avenue, working with ATNI-EDC is opening up new concepts in exactly who is on its potential customer list, Kirkland said. “We don't have the formal green light to proceed with an all-out rural plan, but we're looking at the requirements. It certainly opens up the possibility.”
—Vince Vittore