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It looks to me that there is a large untapped market for a WISP in the rural communities of eastern washington and oregon. I wish I knew more about how to set it up, I would. There are plenty of mountain tops to go around.
Felix, you mentioned a PUD having some sort of backbone. The town I want to relocate to has that and a tower. I don't know the details of it though, still researching.

KC, In the PacificNorthwest and in Northern California, the majority of PUD and municipalities have access to a fiber backbone that is typically used for municipal services. Some PUDs provide the fiber to "retail WiSPs" in their area and it depends on their charter; and may offer interested parties the ability to lease bandwidth off their fiber system for a "retail WiSP". Some call this "wholesale service". There are also the "commercial carriers" such as SBC (ATT) who historically offered rental or lease of their fiber or T1 lines in fractional or whole percentage. This is where the monthly cost is incurred in the building of a WiSP. What are the monthly access fees to get to fiber? is the question. Depends on the region and priority.

Anyway, if you have access to such backbones, then you need a fiber-ethernet connection box, access points, and subscriber modules. For the Motorola Access Point, each Aceess Point can provide IP to 200 subscribers per Access Point (200 of your buddies off one Access Point!)at one time! (line of sight). Rick is right that the original backaul had much to be deisred; and Motorola's partnership with Orthagon is a win-win for customers. As a result you can get a Wireless Line of Sight backhaul up to 300 mbs! Much similar to "fiber in the air".

To be fair, there are other vendors and equipment manufacturers. Just do a Yahoo or Google search on "wireless access point equipment" and you will get several hits.

For me it would be a neat project for high schoolers to install a campus WiSP. If you have access to towers or high points and a fairly good line of sight geographic topology; with budget set aside, you are in a fairly good position.

But remember for commercial level services that a WiSP service requires O&M, uptake, network management, sales, service, customer service, and on-going investement in your system architecture. If not then you would see a lot more people invovled in this areas. The good news is that much Wireless equipment is now available.

In Eastern Washington near Spokane there was a supplier WiFi equipment supplier called ViaVato that recently went belly up. Viavato supplied the WiFi equipment for several WiFi projects in the areas. Demonstrates the business risk and planning needed.

Over the Christmas Holidays, I was involved in the installation of several subscribers for a Wireless IP services provider (WiSP) in the rural foothills of northern California (gold country). I had a great time and was interesting to see comparison of WLAN vs satellite vs DSL for engineers who do VPN on remote offices. the WLAN services offered by the WiSP quickly accepted by the customers. However, it did take about 2 hours per house because you have to make sure the "subscriber module" is appropriately located and installed; then pul the ethernet cable thorugh the wall, then hook up power over the ethernet (POE) connection, and test the system. I can see why the hybrid BPL is both more convenient and less intrusive into the users home.

Good luck to you KC.

One thumbs-up I'll give to Canopy is coming out with 900mhz units. Works great in many situations where 2.4/5.8 can't cut it NLOS.

Backbones in Oregon consist of the usual RBOC/ILEC's (Qwest/ATT) plus the original FTV fiber route that I know WilTel (now Level3) and TWC run on. Few POPs off the FTV though, its more of a longhaul trunk. The major accessible statewide backbone is LightSpeed which used to be NoaNet Oregon. LightSpeed is owned by a consortium of local power companies and is much better than the old NoaNet since they can operate for-profit and thus generate the cash to dump back into expansion. Being a non-municipal backbone offers much more flexibility and less red-tape. The local power companies, multiple CLEC's, and multiple ILEC's all tie into LightSpeed which makes for some powerful solution-providing opportunities between practically any point in Oregon or SW Washington regardless of who's local "turf" the circuits terminate at or run across.

NoaNet is still running in Washington and is doing quite well. I remember them being tied into Douglas, Clallam & Kitsap PUD. The three things I wanted to see was them getting tied into the ELI Lake Washington fiber ring, Snohomish Co PUD, and FiberCloud. No idea if they ever got that far.

Rich - thanks for the insights! Lightspeed sounds like a good consortium. I read that McCaw was somewhere in the tip of southEASTERN Oregon too. That is fine because he will keep everyone lean and mean.

It is interesting what's going on with fiber and last mile. Do you go underground or hang fiber on the poles. Why not just wireless? But hard to beat fiber for pure speed.

But the PUDs, power companies, municipals, and private businesses, all have implied challenges in extending fiber to rural areas - remote or otherwise. I like the idea of exending fiber with Wireless Backhaul into rural neighborhoods for WLAN and WiSP services.

I always thought NOAANet was a progressive "ahead of its time" thinking. They are still very viable, right?

I am also involved in VOIP and ROIP. From a simplistic point of view, it seems to me that NOAANet fiber and Lightspeed's fiber can be utilized for one big giant "inteoperable" ROIP/VOIP emergency back up system as hybrid network to the existing 2-way radio systems by Motorola and others. For example, link up Sonomish PUD, with Puget Sound Energy, with Seattle City Lights with Macon County with etc, etc, etc.

Is it as easy as bringing in the PBX lines, radio analog lines and other misc communications lines to one "box" or switch fabric; such as Cisco's new IPICS router, or the Motobridge by Motorola, or the black box by Raytheon? Finally, I read that the federal government is considering IDEN as an ultimate backup once Sprint (back to KC's original heading!) complete let's go of IDEN. Whew!

Rich - Regarding 900 MHz Canopy. Yes, I'm using the 900 MHz Canopy Access Point for a wireless Meter Reading project in the Silicon Valley because the pilot project is in a residential neighborhood with tree tops. I plan to first shoot a 5.7 GHz signal from the nearest fiber POP. Then I plan to receive the signal about 2 miles away in Line of Sight with my 5.7 + 900 MHz Cluster of Access Points. Then I plan to shoot the 900 MHz spectrumNon Line of Sight (NLOS) to the residential neighborhood for both Meter Reading and IP Access. The IP access will be in the form of the Hybrid BPL and/or regular Subscriber modules with ethernet connection. They hybrid BPL can link up to 20 homes at one time (!) with speeds of 700 Kbs to 1.2 Mbs symmetrical (sorta). Not the fastest but better than nothing for these residents.

McCaw's latest game is NextNet/Clearwire (2.5ghz 802.16). He staked out the spectrum by buying up MMDS licenses from defunct companies.

NoaNet provides Layer 2/3 and TDM services over a DWDM backbone. Not exactly rocket-science but certainly a reliable legacy transport.

A lot of 2-way systems are set up for a TDM backbone so VOIP probably isn't going to work out of the box for some of them. Translating TDM DS0 to a VOIP stream is certainly common however it does not easily address the issue of in-band or out-of-band signal data, well at least past standard telco supervisory signals.

Jeez guys, now I have to look up a bunch of acronimys.
I do know there are three towers on the hill above Republic, owned by Ferry County PUD, Wa State DOT, and a private party (probably the one with the 2 meter machine). I will google some of these acronyms so I get a better understanding.
Rich, is this a reason you moved from Bellingham, to work on these internet deals?
This is one of the better conversations I've seen on this board in a long time!
I did consider a sattelite conection, but don't like the commitment and price.

I moved from Marysville because I wanted to live in a place where the sun shines. Now its all about having some professional fun when interesting opportunities crop up. Here are some recent projects:

- Engineering work on the first citywide public-safety wireless broadband system.

- Designed, engineered, and built the first private-sector multi-city wireless broadband system with true site-to-site roaming.

- Did most of the engineering and programming work for the first complete DOCSIS 2.0 cable rollout with true QoS.

...and now doing some pretty cool WAN design & integration work with fiber/ethernet/SONET/microwave wireless/WiFi.

The fun never ends !

Nice work you're involved wtih Rich - not too many folks have the cross-sectional project experience that Rich has; especially the fiber/DOCSIS stuff and then FTTP (fiber to the premise) in last mile (which is really from the curb to the home).

KC - I read on the Washington state's Economic Development website that some government folks were working with Ferry County to see if they could get funding for fiber and/or Wireless services for rural Ferry County residents. I will look for the weblink and re-post to this forum. I recall the Ferry PUD was working with Ferry County. I am not a local guy to that area and always sensitive to what the locals feel is appropriate for the area. So if you are a local resident, the more power to you!

Anyway, Okanagon County and Okanagon PUD have nice system in place; combo fiber plus wireless extended into rural areas using the new Canopy Backhauls. They have a sharp Newtork man who is always looking towards the future.

Rich - I am working on fiber + WLAN (WiSP) activity. I am currently reviwing a new networks analytics tool by Cymphonix. It is a Packetter type product but designed for small to medium sized business. Also, I read that Cisco plans to obsolesence their 2600 router. I say this because a lot of folks use the 2600 router; even in Canopy WLAN WiSP systems.

Is McCaw serioius about getting into Wireless (WiSP) services? Very serioius if his company purchased the license you mentioned. Sprint has about sixty percent of the spectrum that will be used in WiMAX.

McCaw is serious.

http://www.clearwire.com

Clearwire is trying to come into a couple of our sites. The site acq companies they are using as a flaky as they come. It seems like they are always trying to go cheap, instead of doing it the right way. I guess we'll see soon enough

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I generate Board Warnings

I checked the Clearwire webiste. Pretty nice. There is a Clearwire system in San Joaquin Valley, near Visalia California, or at least read about it or someone mentioned in offhand discussion at Kern St. Coffee in Fresno, California. Kern Street Coffee has free WiFi, the owner, John, is great guy and originally from Oregon and Washington area.

Flx/Guest: I don't live in Repulic yet, but as Rich stated, I want to see the sun also. I'm in Pierce county currently, but am looking to move away from the mold. This internet stuff is new to me (the building part), I'm currently retraining occupations due to an injury from the previous job. I'm foward looking to a 'small pond' for possiblities of building a WiSP or simular.

KC - most of the manufacturers of WiFi (802.11) equipment have "starter kits" to start a WISP/WLAN. For example, Motorola Canopy has a starter kit of (1) Access Point and several Subscriber modules. Each Access Point provides wireless services to 200 customers in a Line of Sight topology. If you are in a tree area then consider the 900 MHz for Non Line of Sight through the tree tops and shubs. You may want to express your business desire to the local PUD in your area or the local Economic Development group. Each County typically has an Economic Development group that may be aware of some funds or other to get started.