No DSL? No problem

When Qwest (www.quest.com) told the city of Buffalo, MN(www.ci.buffalo.mn.us), that it wouldn’t get DSL service in the foreseeable future, Buffalo didn’t get mad. It got into the telecom business itself.

The city of 10,500 decided to provide broadband services “because no one else is,” said Merton Auger, city administrator. It was driven by “our citizens who are sick and tired of 56kb/s,” he said, adding that the city council believes offering broadband services is just as important as building industrial parks.

Buffalo installed a fiber backbone and ATM switch 4½ years ago, when fiber was “expensive, but not as expensive as it is now,” Auger said. The city is also in the electric distribution business and uses telemetry, which was the primary reason for the fiber. It used the backbone to provide high-speed data services to schools, libraries, county offices and several banks.

When the demand increased for services in areas off the backbone, additional fiber was too expensive.

The city looked at various solutions and liked what WaveRider(www.waverider.com) was offering because the vendor had a non-line-of-sight (NLOS) product operating in the unlicensed ISM bands (900MHz). It also includes a network-management system allowing customized service levels. Auger said the solution was user-friendly.

“The last thing we wanted to do was have a big help desk where we’re rebuilding PCs for people,” he said.

WaveRider’s LMS3000 allows throughput speeds up to 1.4Mb/s and operates NLOS over a 1-mile range. It has a customer-installed indoor antenna and modem.

The city plans to launch its wireless Internet service in the next few weeks. Already it has a long waiting list of potential customers. Getting the word out has been easy. Buffalo has its own cable TV channel with programming originating from city hall, and it included inserts in the electric bills.

Because the city can regulate the bandwidth in its system, it will charge $29.99 for 133kb/s, a service for the residential user who also has to buy a modem or rent one at $10 per month. Businesses can get 256kb/s for $49.99 a month, and also have to rent or buy the modem.

The next step will be home networking.

“We plan to work with providers like Coactive Networks (www.coactive.com) on home networking portals where (citizens) are able to monitor such things as their homes’ temperature and security from their desktops at work,” Auger said. Coactive provides a residential gateway, a central point of connectivity between in-home devices and a wide-area Internet access network. It allows in-home devices to access information from the Internet, and it allows the consumer to access home information from virtually anywhere.

Although Buffalo City Council meetings already are broadcast live on its cable channel, the city has plans to provide an interactive connection through the Internet, perhaps through Netmeeting (www.microsoft.com/windows/netmeeting), so citizens can ask questions and express concerns.

Another Minnesota city, Roseville (www.ci.roseville.mn.us ), located in the Minneapolis metro area, tested the WaveRider solution earlier this year, but the project hasn’t gone anywhere. Terre Heiser, network manager, said there were concerns about using unlicensed bands in the congested urban area.

It’s different for Buffalo, which is 26 miles north of Minneapolis. Many citizens commute to Minneapolis but want the option of networking with their corporate information from home. Businesses now have to go on line to purchase the parts that they need, so Internet access is crucial, Auger said.

And a city ISP has certain advantages over a for-profit ISP. For one thing, the “investors” are more concerned about getting the service than making a profit.

“Our goal is to break even,” Auger said.