Wi-Fi towers with broadband begin to emerge in region

Two new companies in the region are offering high-speed Internet access, a service provided mostly by incumbent telephone companies through DSL and cable TV companies through modems. The upstarts are using Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) technology to supply broadband Internet service. They set up towers in strategic locations to beam radio signals from an Internet backbone provided by a fiber optic company. The towers transmit the signals directly to antennas attached to residential and business properties, and from there they go to another antenna on the computer.

Five months ago, Rudy Worrell and several partners started Wave2Net in Stephens City. "A group of us-all in the technology arena-started a limited liability company, and I am the president," he said.

Worrell said Wave2Net has four towers that can send signals from five to 10 to 21 miles, depending on the terrain. "We have towers in Stephens City, Middletown and the northern part of Winchester," said Worrell, who was a computer consultant before starting the business. "We send a signal to the tower and then distribute it to our customers who are using wireless bridges. It's like a cable modem."

Worrell said he gets the broadband from Quest Communications, Inc., a telecom carrier that provides backbones for Internet service providers.

Wave2Net leases space on some cell towers, which vary in height from 50 feet to 200 feet. Antennas, located on the side or roof of the building that receives the signals, can range from several feet to 15 feet.

"It's not cut and dry; we don't have wires," said Worrell. "We need to check out the interference, and the signal strength from a particular location."

He is marketing the Wave2Net service mainly through word-of-mouth, and while he would not give a figure for competitive purposes, said he has "more than a handful of subscribers."

Wave2Net charges residential users $19.99 a month for broadband, and businesses $69.99 a month plus $289 for the antenna, and no monthly contract is required. While the residential price is lower than that for cable and DSL, the business price is in line with the cost of those other two options.

"We offer low-cost, high-speed connections, and we have better customer service," said Worrell. "It's another option. And our biggest selling point is, can you even get those other services?"

Cable modem is available only to those who have cable TV service that has been upgraded to digital, and DSL service will reach only those who live within three miles of the line telephone company's central office. "Wi-Fi is very flexible, you can take the connection with you, like to the park," said Worrell.

To reduce the per subscriber cost, several businesses at one location can share the Wave2Net service, but if there are more than 15 to 20 PCs, Worrell said the rate kicks up to the enterprise solution rate of $89.99 a month.

"We are a full service provider," he said. "It is 500 kbps [kilobits per second], compared to 56k for dial-up service, whereas cable is anywhere from 128 kbps to 1.54 megs [megabytes], and DSL is from 600 to 700 to 1.54 meg, depending on how many people are using the service. By comparison, a dedicated T-1 line is 1.54 megs."

As for security problems using Wi-Fi, which is a radio signal, Worrell said, "The biggest thing is you are sending information over [radio] airwaves, and people with the right equipment can intercept it. We prevent people from going to access us through authentication, and the information is being encrypted. People cannot connect to us without authenticating and being a certified user."

Worrell ' s game plan is to "turn on everyone in Winchester, Stephens City and Berryville," then head over the mountain to Loudoun County. "Our business plan is flexible; it depends on where the demand is."

In Washington County, Mark D'Allura is hoping to add several towers to his Wi-Fi business, SkyHop.com. It has one tower on the south side of Hagerstown, on its office building on Pope Avenue in Hagerstown.

"For now, my goal is to have 100% coverage in Washington County, and then expand to other counties," he said. "I hope to put a 150-foot tower on Fairview Mountain near Clear Spring which will hit a portion of West Virginia and Pennsylvania."

D'Allura is also working on putting a tower on the Dual Highway attached to the Church of God steeple, and the pastor there will get an AM radio station out of it. A third tower would be near North Hagerstown High School. "We are working with the county board of education so they can do all the schools with Wi-Fi," he said. "That would be the primary feed point."

SkyHop is using Sprint as its broadband provider. "They are the most responsive company," said D'Allura, who also has a joint venture with a wireless company.

D'Allura started the Wi-Fi business in February and now has three employees. "It was hit and miss for the better part of this summer, but it's picking up, especially recently. I'm advertising on TV, over the Internet, of course, and through local newspapers."

SkyHop's Wi-Fi service for residential customers costs $39 a month, and the basic business package starts at $69 a month for a speed of 512 kilobits per second. "The commercial service is a bundled package, and it includes e-mails with multiple domains in which the company has control and can add and remove employee users," said D'Allura. "Web hosting is also included in the price."

Regarding security issues, he said that Skyhop deploys a wireless encryption protocol that encrypts the connection from customer sites to any and all points of presence, and the company also uses servers that authenticate each customer connection. "The methods used to secure our network are more a measure of protecting SkyHop's wireless infrastructure from non-subscriber access," he said.

D'Allura is no stranger to the high-tech field. "I worked for 18 years for a family-owned security company, Secure Data Systems," he said. "We sold it in May 2001 to a South African company. I was vice president at the company and I ran all the networking technology. The new thing was wireless-that's why I got into it.

"Wi-Fi is a tricky business with a lot of technology involved and a lot of planning and studying must go into it. For example, you have to make sure you're putting towers in the right location."