$300,000 National Science Foundation grant to fund updated wireless system on the Flathead Reservation

PABLO – With the help of a $300,000 National Science Foundation grant and some state-of-the-art Motorola communications technology, Salish Kootenai College soon will be installing the "backbone" for a high-speed wireless communications network for use by businesses and tribal agencies on the Flathead Reservation.

By JOHN STROMNES of the Missoulian

Eventually, the network could be used to provide high-speed Internet service for home Internet users in the area, said Steve Dupuis, project director for the Flathead Wireless Network at the college. And it could be used to solve some of the headaches that plague plain old voice telephone service on the reservation as well, where three different phone companies provide local service, and where you can be charged long-distance rates for calling between Pablo and Polson five miles away.

Within a few weeks, the first part of the system will be installed, linking a small radio transmitting device on an existing tower on Polson Hill with another tower in Charlo. That tower links the SKC network to the world, shooting the signals to Missoula to be transmitted on a fiber-optic telephone line to their ultimate destinations.

The network will transmit the signals with the latest proprietary hardware developed by Motorola, called Canopy. A Canopy RF (radio-frequency) transmitter is about the size and weight of a flashlight, and has a range of two miles. The signal from one Canopy transmitter can go 10 miles if boosted by one reflector dish, and 20 miles with reflector dishes at each end of the communications link. Signals are in the 5 gigahertz range, which are not regulated by the federal government.

According to Motorola, the Canopy system is affordable, flexible and virtually eliminates interference problems found in other fixed wireless systems. It was released just last summer, so it is relatively new. But it is well tested.

Dupuis himself has experience installing Canopy prototype systems as a SKC technology consultant at Turtle Mountain and Fort Berthold reservations in North Dakota.

The research under the National Science Foundation grant will focus on how wireless communications can benefit education and businesses on the reservation. This could mean more opportunities to work from home, improved IP (Internet protocol) services to current businesses, the attraction of new, high-tech, low-impact business to the community and improvements in online education, Dupuis said.

Among the businesses that will be involved with the research project this year and next are S&K Technologies of St. Ignatius, S&K Electronics of Pablo, CompuPlus of Polson and, of course, Salish Kootenai College itself.

Dupuis is manager of the new bachelor of information technology program at SKC, which will begin accepting students in the fall of 2003. Students in the IT program will be deeply involved in research on the voice-over capabilities of the network, for example. This could resolve some of the difficulties now involved in simply calling the five miles or so from Pablo to Polson, which is a long-distance call on the reservation, as is a call from St. Ignatius to Ronan.

The fixed wireless network broadband system will not only be far faster than conventional phone-line Internet service, but faster than DSL phone service now available in some reservation communities, Dupuis said, and will be comparable to Internet service provided via satellite.

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., in a press release, said he was quite pleased with the grant.

"The installation of high-speed networks in Montana is key to our growth and development. Research at this level will go far toward bringing new high-paying jobs to Montana," Burns said.

Reporter John Stromnes can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or [email protected].

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