Bringing Broadband Over the Mountain – Roadstar Puts Wireless Technology to the Test

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael K. Powell traveled last week to a hay-strewn barn at the end of a gravel road high above the Virginia countryside and proclaimed he had seen the future of broadband.

By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writer

The barn, routinely used by the local children for paintball practice, doubles as a radio receiver and retransmitter that enables residents and businesses in western Loudoun County to get something that can be hard to come by in rural places such as this: high-speed Internet service.

"I’m extremely impressed," Powell said after touring the barn, which has six discreet antennas, ranging in size from four to 18 inches, planted firmly on its roof. "This is what we’ve worked so hard to create. This is the face of things to come."

Martin Dougherty, chief executive of Roadstar Internet Inc. of Bluemont, Va., certainly hopes so. Dougherty installed the antennas as the centerpiece for his start-up, which aims to use wireless technology to bring broadband service into areas where cable modems and digital-subscriber-line (DSL) technology do not reach.

The company got off the ground in February, and after months of stuffing fliers into mailboxes up and down back roads in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Roadstar now has more than 150 customers.

Last Monday the company showed off its network to Powell, FCC Commissioner Kevin J. Martin and numerous other FCC officials, all of whom will be watching closely to see if Roadstar can succeed.

Although broadband has become readily available in urban and suburban areas, rural America is still trying to catch up. In sparsely populated regions, including portions of Loudoun, there just aren’t enough customers for the cable and phone companies to justify the infrastructure costs associated with deploying broadband.

Powell said that for that reason, wireless may be the solution or, at the very least, another viable player in what he hopes will be a highly competitive market.

For the Weitz family, until recently, there was hardly any competition at all. "It’s feast or famine out here," said Rick Weitz of Bluemont, whose wife, Kathy, home-schools five out of their six children with the aid of the Internet. "Before Roadstar it was all famine."

Before this year, the family had a dial-up connection that slogged along, making online learning an excruciatingly slow process. Since they signed up for Roadstar, however, they said their connection has improved significantly.

"When we had dial-up, you would sit there for hours. This is a lot faster," said Caleb Weitz, 16.

For its business customers, who pay a $250 installation fee and then $99 per month, Roadstar guarantees connection speeds ranging from 128 kilobits per second (kbps) to 1.5 megabits per second (mbps) for both the downlink and the uplink. Residential customers pay the same installation fee, but only $59 per month.

Dougherty said there are no guarantees for residential users, but that speeds average around 800 kbps. By comparison, DSL and cable modem connections typically range between several hundred kbps and 1.5 mbps for the downlink, and up to 128 kbps for the uplink. Most dial-up modem speeds top out at 56 kbps. To get broadband out to an area that’s more than an hour’s drive from Washington, Dougherty’s company uses an unlicensed portion of the spectrum that he beams in from Equinix Inc., a flea market of sorts for bandwidth that has a facility in Ashburn. The signal travels 18 miles from Ashburn to a 1,200-foot crest in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where Roadstar’s receiver sits perched on the barn in Bluemont.

From the barn, the signal is then retransmitted down into the rustic towns and posh subdivisions at the foot of the ridge, where Roadstar has scattered a dozen repeater stations. Each of those stations, which can be positioned on anything from private homes to silos, has its own antennas. The repeater stations then pass the signal on for its last leg, into the homes and offices of Roadstar’s customers.

Dougherty said Roadstar’s service has been "rock solid," staying up and running even during this winter’s blizzards. And at least for now, he said, the company is profitable, though small, with only three employees.

But Dougherty said his company will have to grow if it is to succeed. "In order for this to be a profitable business, you’ve got to deploy in mass numbers. There’s no way around it," he said.

And to do that, he said, there has to be more unlicensed spectrum available, especially low-end spectrum that can more easily penetrate trees and other obstacles.

"I’m using it as fast as I can," Dougherty said. "Eventually I’m going to run out of spectrum and I’m going to have to tell customers, ‘I can’t help you.’ "

Powell indicated last week that he was sympathetic to Dougherty’s concern, and on Wednesday the FCC voted to propose several regulatory amendments intended to make it easier for entrepreneurs such as Dougherty to bring wireless broadband to rural America.

Dougherty will also need money. So far, he and his wife, Rosemary, who serves as the company’s marketing director, have funded Roadstar out of their own pockets, with some help from investments by a customer and a former colleague. The next round of funding, which Martin Dougherty said he expects soon, will come from venture capitalists.

FCC officials say they do not know exactly how many rural residents are being served by wireless broadband, but they say the number has been increasing exponentially over the last year. "It’s one of those things that is literally growing faster than anybody could have imagined," said Robert Pepper, the FCC’s chief of policy development.

Although wireless is one of the few options available to many rural residents today, the field could soon become a lot more crowded.

Arunas Slekys, vice president at Hughes Network Systems, said his company has begun to bundle Direcway, a satellite system for deploying broadband at speeds of around 400 kbps on the downlink and 128 kbps on the uplink, with its popular satellite television service, DirecTV. Slekys said Direcway has so far signed up 200,000 customers nationwide, and the service is catching on fast in places like Loudoun.

For cable service, Adelphia Communications spokesman Paul Jacobson said the company has undertaken a major upgrade of its network to allow more customers access to broadband. Jacobson said the company’s cables run past 70,000 homes in Loudoun, of which 44,500 can get high-speed Internet today. After the improvements are completed next year, he said, all 70,000 will be eligible.

Verizon, meanwhile, continues to offer T-1 connections for businesses that can afford the steep price, as well as DSL in an increasing number of areas. But Verizon is also looking at deploying wireless broadband itself, according to spokesman Harry Mitchell. The company just completed a test on a wireless system in Fairfax County, indicating that wireless could be an option for the suburbs as well.

"Wireless is increasingly becoming a competitor on the broadband front, not only in the most rural areas," Mitchell said.

For Randy Collins, president and chief executive of the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce, the introduction of new broadband choices is welcome news, especially considering that the options have historically been "poor."

The first few attempts to offer wireless broadband, he said, did not offer much hope for improvement, with companies offering spotty service.

But Collins said that with Roadstar’s arrival and the introduction of better wireless technology, he expects that things will soon begin to change.

"Wireless is catching up with itself," Collins said. "It’s able to offer reasonably priced, high speed, reliable service. And that’s what people want."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9955-2003Sep14.html