Koelemay's Kosmos

Doug Koelemay

Unwired and Proud

Rural Virginia’s move to wireless communications shows how fast new technology is driving economic development thinking forward.

The confounding nature of technology-driven change is evident to anyone thinking about how to join the great broadband revolution. The dilemma mimics the old Jaws 2 trailer, "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water …" Everyone knows that as soon as they commit to one new technology, another will come along to bite them.

In the 1990s, communities across Virginia were eager to get “wired” – to lace their communities with fiber-optic trunk lines and extensions – to gain access to broadband telecommunications services. Today, it's a badge of honor to be "unwired," to achieve connectivity through wireless technology. As a result, broadband-related economic development strategies are moving faster than the plot-line in the shark thriller.

Until recently, local policy emphasized construction of fiber-optic networks. Strategies for “wiring” under-served communities included grants and loans to under-served municipalities… tax deductions for telecoms to their extend networks in less populated areas… tax credits for technology bonds whose proceeds are used to deploy advanced broadband fiber networks… even the lifting of federal rules that inhibited regional Bell operating companies from investing in their networks.

More lately, policy has focused on aggregating demand, based on the logic that no one will invest in broadband infrastructure unless there are a sufficient number of customers, and revenues, to generate a favorable return on investment. In early March technology industry leaders applauded science advisors in the Bush administration for focusing on boosting demand for broadband Internet service. Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) President Harris Miller, who also is a member of the Virginia Research and Technology Advisory Commission, urged the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) to help build a better value proposition for broadband consumers. Tim Hugo, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based technology policy group, CapNet, and also the newest member of Virginia's House of Delegates from Centreville, suggested that comprehensive broadband strategy required a look at the demand side.

Earlier this month, Gov. Mark R. Warner and Secretary of Commerce and Trade Michael J. Schewel fired up a regional telecommunications conference in Abingdon. Reiterating the state’s commitment to bring broadband services to Appalachian Virginia, Warner said the Commonwealth will serve as a facilitator between communities and the private sector to help aggregate demand, provide technical assistance and consider grants and funds to complete "last mile" fiber optic connections in the most remote rural communities.

Virginia's Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission, meanwhile, has announced a $600 million endowment to be established through bond sales, which will kick between $8 million and $15 million annually for telecommunications projects in Southwest and Southside Virginia. The Tobacco Commission's eCorridors task force soon will receive soon a huge report from Virginia Tech on the e58 project to build a fiber optic backbone along U.S. Highway 58. Broadband = wired = last mile? Unwired = unwashed? Not exactly.

Thanks to legislation shepherded through the General Assembly by Del. Clarence "Bud" Phillips, D-Castlewood, Dickenson County soon will have the authority to take a different approach to broadband that is both unwired and proud. A new wireless communications authority is to operate a new Dickenson County Wireless Integrated Network (DCWIN), which has the potential to link local government agencies, first responders, small businesses and consumers through antennas perched on towers or hilltops at an infrastructure cost maybe a tenth of what fiber might cost. Each antenna has its own connection to the Internet.

That's how wireless broadband works, but the question, of course, is can it work? Clintwood, a town in Dickenson County, has been testing a "micro-cell" successfully since July 2002. Wireless connectivity is breaking out all over, not just in Virginia's coalfields. BellSouth recently gave the press covering the Daytona 500 wireless modems to hook into its fixed wireless network instead of installing its usual, expensive connection gear for the weekend. Businesses on the West Coast are getting three megabits-per-second wireless broadband connections right now.

Verizon Wireless used St. Patrick's Day to announce new high-speed data service for the Greater Northern Virginia region through a new Evolution Data Only (EvDO) network. Verizon Wireless says its tests allowed users to download files at speeds up to 2.4 megabits per second (that's 60 percent faster than cable modems) and at speeds from 300 to 600 kilobits to per second while on the go, from five to ten times as fast as a dial-up modem. A working EvDO network could be a major step toward the "third generation" wireless technology (3G) that South Korea and much of Europe already use to do things, like watch television on their cell phones, that Americans can only dream of doing.

Wireless broadband connections and "hotspots" where users can link through wireless fidelity networks, WiFi for short, provide the newest bragging rights for regions and communities intent on technology-driven economic development. Intel's March survey of the country's "Most Unwired Cities" shows the Portland, San Francisco-San Jose-Oakland, Austin-San Marcos, Seattle-Bellevue-Everett-Tacoma, Orange County, California and Washington, D.C. metro areas leading the list. At first glance, that seems to track some of the "Most Wired Cities" from other surveys, until one realizes eight of the top ten "Unwired" are western, read rapidly adaptable, metro areas. For the record, Greater Richmond is ranked 78^th, Hampton Roads 86^th and Johnson City-Kingsport-Bristol 96^th.

Fixed-wireless broadband, as both technology experts and business executives have learned, isn't without its problems. Subscribers need direct line-of-sight, which storms and even dense foliage can affect. Once high-flying firms in Virginia, from Teligent to Winstar, are bankrupt. And federal regulators are pretty stingy in dealing out more spectrum, licensed and unlicensed, for wireless Internet uses.

Unlike "wired," "wirelessed" isn't likely to make it into the national lexicon. And Clintwood is too small to make any "Most UnWired Cities" list in any case. But wireless connections may boost Dickenson County businesses and residents right up there with the big boys of broadband -- Baa-dum, Baa-dum, Baa-dum Baa-dum -- at least until the next technological breakthrough.

-- March 31, 2003