Home on the Web

Terry is a farming community of about 600 residents in southeast Montana. It's a small town with a big technology advantage. Earlier this summer, Terry became one of the first communities in the world to receive 1XRTT wireless data service.

Beta testers and public school students were the first residents to access the Internet wirelessly at an average speed of 70kb/s, sometimes achieving a peak throughput rate of 144kb/s.

The response has been positive.

“They think it's Christmas out there,” said John Tedeschi, Western Wireless vice president of technology development.

Cellular One (owned by Western Wireless) plans a full commercial deployment of the 1XRTT wireless data service in Terry as soon as handsets and modem cards become more plentifully available from manufacturers.

This month, 40 elementary students at Terry Public Schools will begin logging onto the Internet to collaborate on education projects with students around the world, said Gary Ryti, Terry superintendent and elementary principal.

“We hope to use it with the academic resources available through the Internet,” Ryti said “The increased speed will be a tremendous asset to us, without question. We're just neophytes, so to speak, in this area. So we need some time to get it up and running to see what the capabilities will be.”

Cellular One will provide free airtime and modem cards to Terry High School. CTIA's Wireless Foundation is providing 10 Nokia handsets and 10 wirelessly enabled Gateway laptops through its ClassLink program. Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) and representatives from Western Wireless and CTIA were scheduled to attend a Nov. 16 ceremony to dedicate the school's new equipment.

A Good Fit

Bringing high-speed wireless data connections to the rural West may seem a noble endeavor, considering its sparse population and low economies of scale. But Steve Slattery, Nortel vice president and general manager of CDMA and TDMA, said 1XRTT is more economical to provide than ISDN or DSL, for example.

“You have to look at the whole business case for providing such a (data) service,” Slattery said. “Say it's ISDN. There's the copper, the modem device, and you have to send someone to the site. When you get to wireless, you can sell the PCMCIA card in the same stores you sell phones in. So you don't have to go to a customer's house. The cost to roll a truck is about $400. If you think about DSL or cable, it takes them maybe a year to recover the cost of the initial truck rolls. From a business case, that's where wireless gets interesting.”

In addition to making economic sense, 1XRTT's evolutionary path allows a carrier such as Western Wireless to build for the future with 1XEV, 1XEV-DO and 1XEV-DV enhancements — all of which can be implemented by placing new cards in existing base-station racks, Slattery said.

In selecting Terry, Western Wireless considered a number of factors, Tedeschi said. One, the carrier has a nearby switching facility and two, the town is in a remote location removed from the watchful eye of competitors, he said.

Also, Tedeschi said many Western Wireless customers live in rural areas with limited Internet and telecommunications service-plan choices (see chart).

“We're finding the vast majority of people don't have access to DSL or ISDN or other high-speed service on a landline,” he said. “So we can go in there with 1XRTT and give them between 70kb/s and 140kb/s, depending on time of day. We're three times faster (than other options) even at the low end.”

Copper-based Internet services rely on infrastructure that in many rural areas is a half-century old, Tedeschi said.

“Will (1X) replace the existing (ISP) service out there? I clearly think so,” he said. “It's a better service, and it's faster.”

Nortel's Slattery has been pleased with early 1X performance results, including the Terry deployment.

Service	Carrier	Speed	Cost
1XRTT	Cellular One	70kb/s (Average)	N/A
Dial-up	Midrivers Telecommunications	50kb/s (Average)	$7.95 - $19.95/mo.
DSL	Midrivers Telecommunications	256kb/s Upstream 256kb/s Downstream	$59.95/mo.
DSL	Midrivers Telecommunications	256kb/s Upstream 512kb/s Downstream	$79.95/mo.
DSL	Midrivers Telecommunications	256kb/s Upstream 768kb/s Downstream	$99.95/mo.
Access Options in Terry, MT

“We're finding that 1XRTT is performing exactly as we expected it,” he said. “The data is particularly exciting, because it's a significant leap forward in the data rates and throughput.”

Slattery said one of the ways to measure wireless data performance is by aggregate data throughput, which for 1XRTT is 200kb/s.

“That means I could support five users simultaneously at 40kb/s, or I could support four users at 50kb/s or two users at 100kb/s,” he said. “That's a capacity number and a per carrier sector. Typically, cell sites are three sectors. You can stack carriers and have 200kb/s of aggregate data throughput in one carrier in one sector.”

Though capacity is 200kb/s, the peak data rate a single user can achieve is limited to 144kb/s. But because data traffic is bursty, a sector can simultaneously support about 35 users. Cellular One's system in Terry uses one tower with three sectors, which could serve more than 100 subscribers simultaneously.

“You're not going to have all (Terry residents) online at the same time,” Slattery said.

Tedeschi said Cellular One's single cell site in Terry provides more than enough coverage for the town's population and geographic area.

“As far as coverage expanding beyond the town, we haven't bothered to drive test all the way out to the badlands, because there's no need to,” he said. “The town is where it is, and we cover the town amply … Our expectation next year is that we will bring 1XRTT to several markets — and markets that are larger than Terry.”

---

Creative Data

Wireless data service is being used off the beaten path, and in unconventional ways. By removing the hard-wired requirements of ISDN, cable or other high-speed Internet connections, wireless data services can address the needs of rural voters and residents.

• AARO Broadband Wireless Communications began a trial project this August in Norman, OK, to provide fixed-wireless Internet access and services to that community. The services — which will operate at up to 11Mb/s — also include virtual private networks, videoconferencing, e-mail and voice over IP. The operator's goal is to provide such services to the entire state of Oklahoma by using the state's 49 regional business airports as the delivery sites in deploying fixed wireless infrastructure.

• IlliCom Telecommunications in September announced that it would use WaveRider Communications LMS3100 non-line-of-sight wireless infrastructure to provide fixed-wireless Internet access to residential and small-business customers in east central Illinois. The service first will be launched in Paxton, IL, where the carrier maintains its central office. The first 100 customers were connected in October. Those customers access the Internet at a maximum throughput speed of 1.4Mb/s over the license-free 900MHz ISM frequency band in a 1-mile range. Equipment required includes a wireless modem and an indoor antenna installed by subscribers, eliminating the need for truck rolls.

• The state of Virginia and its Board of Elections last year began providing voters with wireless access to real-time election results. The service is run through the Virginia Information Providers Network (VIPNet). In the past year, VIPNet and other government entities have added other services. Virginians now can access wirelessly the state's public-meetings calendar, a polling-place directory, consumer-assistance portal and legislative tracking service. The state's goal is to make all government information services accessible via desktop PC or wireless device.