| issue
highlights |
April 2, 2008 | A
Penton
Media, Inc. Publication |
editor's
perspective
The value of experience
April 2, 2008, by Carol Wilson
There is a natural attraction, particularly in the technology industry,
to what's new. The assumption always is that what lies just over the
horizon will always be better, bigger, faster, cheaper than what's in
use today.
In many instances, this is true, particularly in the wireless arena.
For
more than a decade, the wireless industry has produced handsets that
are
smaller, more powerful, consume less power and do more things. Being
stuck with last year's model is, well, being stuck.
But it is important in the rush to the new and better not to lose sight
of technology that continues to work and to meet specific objectives,
with the benefit of maturity, scalability and price performance that
new
off-the-shelf technology can't always claim.
That's why in the broadband wireless infrastructure game, what's proven
as possible, reliable and profitable has to be taken into account,
along
side of what's new and different.
For many applications, having a proven technology enables a service
provider to deploy with greater confidence because there is a track
record, a history of solving the knotty deployment issues that
invariably confront wireless networks. In this custom editorial case
study, my colleague Sarah Reedy looks at one such deployment of a
proven
broadband wireless solution.
Seaside Communications wasn't solving theoretical problems but the
real-world challenges of providing always-on Internet access to a rural
Canadian population. Read how they did it, below.
E-mail me at cwilson3@telephonyonline.com.
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April 2, 2008
In rural Sydney, Nova Scotia, the population is spread thin across
mountain ranges, flat lands, deep valleys and woodlands. Out of the
diverse region’s 35 million residents, as many as 200,000 are
unconnected -- comprising 93,500 homes, 5600 business, 213 schools and
thousands of tourists and summer residents. By the end of 2009,
however,
this will no longer be the case. SeaSide Communications is committed to
enabling every single Nova Scotian with Internet connectivity by Dec.
31, 2009. Powered by Motorola’s broadband wireless technology,
Canopy,
and commissioned by the government of Nova Scotia, the province is in
on
its way to being the most connected in North America.
(Click on the link above or scroll down for the full-length
feature)
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capture even the most demanding customers today and tomorrow.
Mix-and-match our technologies to grow your network faster and more
cost-effectively than with alternative technology. Visit www.motorola.com/motowi4.
|
April 2, 2008
In rural Sydney, Nova Scotia, the population is spread thin across
mountain ranges, flat lands, deep valleys and woodlands. Out of the
diverse region’s 35 million residents, as many as 200,000 are
unconnected -- comprising 93,500 homes, 5600 business, 213 schools and
thousands of tourists and summer residents. By the end of 2009,
however,
this will no longer be the case. SeaSide Communications is committed to
enabling every single Nova Scotian with Internet connectivity by Dec.
31, 2009. Powered by Motorola’s broadband wireless technology,
Canopy,
and commissioned by the government of Nova Scotia, the province is in
on
its way to being the most connected in North America.
In operation for 30 years, SeaSide has been offering Internet services
over its cable plant for the last 13. Today, Internet revenues
represent
about half of the regional cable TV operator’s bottom line. Seaside
began using fixed broadband wireless about four years ago as a means to
reach beyond the cable plant to those residents just on the other side
of the wire. According to Todd White, Internet manager at SeaSide, it
took 30 years to grow the company to its current size. The project they
are undertaking now will double the size of the rural telco in just two
years.
“We’re to the point now in the industry where Internet is no longer
about bits and bytes and technology, which is hard for any engineer to
hear, but it really comes down to this is basic – this is a
telephone,
this is turning on your lights in your home – you have an Internet
connection,” White said.
After successfully completing a pilot area, SeaSide along with Bragg
Communications won government contracts to provide service across the
province, with SeaSide commissioned to the upper two-thirds of the
geography and Bragg assigned to the bottom one-third. White said that
the project will require erecting approximately 500 towers sites within
the two-year time frame, an “aggressive logistical challenge” that
could not be accomplished alone.
The two service providers are sharing the $74.5-million broadband
initiative costs with provincial and federal governments, with SeaSide
and Bragg accounting for $40.4 million. Under the terms of the
government, no customer can be required to pay a premium for their
service over what the market rates are in the urban centers. For
SeaSide, this means charging $100 for installation or $44.95 for the
monthly service of a 1.5-megabit connection.
“If you have a farmer who is 10 miles down the road and away from a
center, the premium you pay to put that customer online is quite
high,” White said. “From a purely business standpoint, there are
some cases you would never do it. You wouldn’t get a return. So the
province’s contribution to this contract is to ensure a one-time
subsidy to get the infrastructure in place to overcome the commercial
challenges to deploying the infrastructure to those areas.”
As a one-shot investment, starting in 2010, SeaSide is on its own to
demonstrate they can maintain a commercially viable and profitable
business to extend far beyond the two years. The province will continue
monitoring the project for five years, but will cease funding after the
first two. As such, working with Motorola and unlicensed broadband
wireless made the most sense from a business and technological
standpoint.
“When you are dealing with VoIP as well, the fixed wireless has
really
become the only legitimate, commercially viable way of extending that
plant in these low-density areas,” White said. “If you had to build
the stuff with cable plant or fiber or DSL technologies, it really
becomes cost prohibitive. There is just no financial reason you would
do
this as a business decision. So fixed wireless actually provides you a
technology solution that allows you to enter these areas and receive a
positive business benefit from it.”
As a small, rural provider, leveraging the licensed spectrum was not an
option because of the sheer cost of spectrum ownership. According to
Jim
Garlington, regional sales manager of the North America Service
Provider
Team for Motorola Government and Commercial Markets, unlicensed
spectrum
gives SeaSide the flexibility to move around the interference in rural
areas without having the expenditures that are inherent in microwave or
WiMAX. SeaSide also wanted to avoid a tariff environment, which
wouldn’t make sense for its low-population density townships. When
trying to reach only 100 customers or so in each remote part of the
province, sharing a part of the tower infrastructure and getting those
towers in the licensed bands was significantly more expensive.
“If we have to get from, say, our fiber optic backbone that runs down
the province of Nova Scotia and into the rural community, which is
farmland, bed and breakfast and small commercial businesses, the cost
to
string fiber or hardwire or microwave -- which is overkill because it
has too much bandwidth -- is prohibitive,” Garlington said. “By
putting 900 MHz Canopy point-to-multipoint in, we can do it in a very
cost-effective manner.”
SeaSide’s current Internet customers receive service over hybrid
fiber/coax (HFC). Motorola’s Canopy solution works over the HFC
network to deliver technologies including broadband Internet access,
VoIP, video services, security surveillance and E-1/T-1 capabilities.
The Canopy platform, currently powering networks in 4000 systems
worldwide, is one of the lowest total costs of ownership for carriers.
Most opt to use it because it can be deployed quickly and inexpensively
to large geographies. The unlicensed technology uses spectrum ranging
from 2.4 to 5.9 GHz and 900 MHz, which Garlington said SeaSide is
primarily utilizing in Nova Scotia.
“Over the four years we had been experimenting we tried different
technologies, and we found that because of the population density,
because of the geography, because we are dealing with everything from
valleys and very flat land all the way up to the Cape Breton Highlands
[part of the Appalachian Mountain Range], the wireless technologies we
were working with worked technically better in those environment,”
White said. “It was seen to be quite resilient to the weather
conditions we get up here -- snow flurries and ice storms and high
winds
in the mountain ranges.”
SeaSide considered a number of other vendors for the solution before
landing on Motorola, a company White trusted for its long-time
understanding of radio-frequency technologies. He was confident
Motorola
knew how to support the carrier, as well as provide the proper
management tools. White said that thus far Canopy has been an extremely
solid technology platform. More so than any technological roadblocks,
SeaSide has had to overcome the tremendous number of logistic and
regulatory issues of a project of this magnitude, ones White said would
be inherent in any jurisdiction. Garlington added that there has been a
tremendous amount of interest from business development within Motorola
to replicate this project in Europe. While there is no reason this type
of ambitious project could not be replicated, the business model must
be
balanced against the technology to make it a feasible and desirable
undertaking.
“The technology is what gets it to the point where this is a viable
business,” White said. “If we were trying to do it with DSL or
fiber
coax, it wouldn’t happen. We wouldn’t do it or we would be coming
back to the government saying give us more money if you want us to keep
this going, because it wouldn’t be profitable. Or at the time you
invested in the capital, you wouldn’t be able to recover your money
in
any reasonable time frame. Fixed wireless has actually made that a
possibility or at least a little more palatable. For a relatively small
subsidy by the government, there will be a viable business at the end
of
four or five years, and the payback will begin from that point out.”
Fixed broadband wireless technology, and Motorola’s Canopy, is just
the starting point for SeaSide. The carrier is also looking toward
migrating to fixed or wireless WiMAX in the future. As technology,
price
points and the need for more bandwidth continues to change, SeaSide
will
adapt its business model and invest in tower infrastructure to keep up
with a changing technological environment. With the appropriate costing
model, White said, nothing is off limits.
“Really, the entire strategic view of where the technology is going
is
something that we will keep tabs on, and we will be continually
upgrading the infrastructure to deal with that,” White said.
“Getting the customers on initially requires a whole lot of
logistics.
And another reason we thought Motorola was pretty strong was because of
their investment in this industry and where it is going. So we’ll
start today with Canopy then we’ll upgrade to say WiMAX and we’ll
be
able to keep upgrading the technology on an ongoing basis to keep up
with the technology of the time.”
White said the company will also consider licensed spectrum. Once they
get the tower infrastructure in place, the question will become, what
technologies make the most sense? And consumers may well indicate that
what makes the most sense is what is fastest, most versatile and up to
date. Once you provide the tools, he said, consumers will only want
more. Right now, Canopy makes the most sense. Once 100% of the province
is successfully enabled to receive broadband wireless -- a milestone
White is confident SeaSide will reach by the end of 2009 -- anything is
possible.
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The value of
experience
