View this email as a Web page Please add Telephony's Technology Update to your Safe Sender list.
  issue highlights April 2, 2008 | A Penton Media, Inc. Publication  
The value of experience

SeaSide Communications' Nova Scotia Project

Related links


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.


ADVERTISEMENT

It's Time to Broaden Your 
Perception of Broadband


Motorola's field-proven wireless broadband solutions complement practically any network and support the services your customers expect. Click here to download a FREE white paper that examines how a growing number of operators are designing reliability into broadband networks using unlicensed frequencies.

ADVERTISEMENT

Significantly Increase Your Coverage Without Doing the Same to Your Investment

Do you have high-potential customers who are out of sight to your network? With the newly available Motorola Canopy 400 Series of non-line-of-sight solutions you can now set your sights on reaching the out-of-sight. Click here and learn more.



case study

SeaSide Communications' Nova Scotia Project

By Sarah Reedy
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)


related links
 


ADVERTISEMENT

Connect Your Everywhere Today and Tomorrow

Motorola's MOTOwi4™ wireless broadband solutions can help you 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.




case study (Full-Length)

SeaSide Communications' Nova Scotia Project

By Sarah Reedy
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.


To unsubscribe from this newsletter go to: Unsubscribe

To subscribe to this newsletter, go to: Subscribe

To subscribe to our print publication, click here: Subscribe

To get this newsletter in a different format (Text or HTML), or to change your e-mail address, please visit your profile page to change your delivery preferences.

For questions concerning delivery of this newsletter, please contact our Customer Service Department at:
Customer Service Department
Telephony Magazine
A Penton Media publication
US Toll Free: 866-505-7173 International: 847-763-9504 Email:telephonyonline@pbinews.com

Penton Media | 249 W. 17th Street | New York, NY 10011

Copyright 2007, Penton Media. All rights reserved. This article is protected by United States copyright and other intellectual property laws and may not be reproduced, rewritten, distributed, re-disseminated, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast, directly or indirectly, in any medium without the prior written permission of Penton Media.