EarthLink Discusses its City Wi-Fi Plans

INTERVIEW Municipalities are increasingly looking for new ways to bridge the digital divide, bring their towns into the 21st century and offer residents a more cost-effective high-speed Internet alternative. Cole Reinwand, Director of Next Generation Broadband at EarthLink, recently sat down with BetaNews to discuss the technology behind making the wireless dreams of city planners a reality.

BetaNews: Thanks for joining us. Could you give us an update on what EarthLink is doing in the municipal wireless space? We know you have been selected in Philadelphia and Anaheim, and are a finalist in Minneapolis. We'd like to know where you guys are looking at, what you've been doing and how these networks are going to work.

Cole Reinwand: Sure. You mentioned that we've been fortunate enough to be selected in two cities and are a finalist in another. We also made proposals in four or five other cities that have had an open bidding process, but we haven't heard anything back from those yet.

In terms of what we are thinking about doing, these are networks that will utilize mesh Wi-Fi technology at the ground level to provide the last 200-300 feet of connectivity. But those connections will be through 802.11b and 802.11g technologies, and will go down to consumers who are using equipment they own or bought from a retail channel that EarthLink will fulfill, or wholesale partners.

Stepping back one layer, we'll haul the traffic out of the mesh Wi-Fi layer using point-to-multipoint fixed wireless technology provided by Motorola canopy equipment. We'll haul the traffic to the towers and from the towers we'll use other terrestrial fiber links or microwave backhaul to aggregate all our traffic back to a local POP (point of presence). At this point, we'll connect to the backbone. That’s sort of a high-level overview of how the technology works; it's a hybrid of mesh-Wi-Fi and point-to-multipoint technology.

BN: Where is EarthLink putting these towers? Since you said these things have a radius of 200-300 feet, will the connection points be about that far away from each other?

CR: In the Wi-Fi layer, the actual distance the signal will be able to reach would be much more than that. That's the distance of the average consumer equipment. The equipment we'll be using is much more powerful than your typical consumer device. That equipment actually has a range of about 1,200 feet. The difficulty takes place when you're trying to get your low power devices in the home to attach back to a node that is that far away.

We are specifying the use of a little bit more powerful radio and/or a directional antenna if people want to achieve indoor use. So we'd suggest a 200mw card with a high-gain antenna. As for where the nodes will go, they'd be on streetlights and utility poles across the coverage area.

There are actually no towers involved in the mesh layer. In the point-to-multipoint layer, that’s where you actually get into towers and roof mounting. Every so many nodes we'll put a canopy subscriber module, which will aggregate from the local three to five mesh units and we'll carry that up to a tower or rooftop where we'll backhaul it back to the POP.

BN: In order for the Wi-Fi to work inside buildings, people are going to need to use an antenna -- that's what you're saying?

CR: It's not necessary, but it will be helpful. What we're trying to do is achieve a very high indoor coverage level. Much of the cities are suggesting 85-90 percent indoor coverage. In order to achieve that out of the gate we are going to suggest customers use this more powerful equipment.

Once we get into the markets and start building out the networks and test, we will determine if that more expensive equipment will be required, or if customers will be able to achieve good service using off the shelf equipment, which will save everyone a lot of money.

BN: Lets take the Philadelphia project, for example. What is the rollout process? Do you start from Center City and move outward, or start in a couple sections of the city and work from there to connect everybody?

CR: We are going to begin with a 15 square mile pilot area. Right now, the area that we are looking at is north and east of downtown, which not by design turned out to be a significant area of low-income residences. The reason why we chose that area is that it provides a nice representation of citywide morphology -- meaning some tall buildings, some forested areas, some row homes, some parks, and so forth. It really gives us a nice sense of the city.

What we want to do in the concept phase is validate that we can achieve the service level in every part of the city. We’ll start with the pilot for three to six months, and once we've fined tuned the system, we'll begin to roll out to the rest of the city on a phased basis within six months after that.

The hanging of the equipment will take place fairly quickly. There will be no method to it, as far as trying to satisfy high-income households -- we'll really be doing it more as a technical convenience. But it will happen so quick that I don't think any part of the city will feel like it's being left out.

BN: Why North Philadelphia? With it being a low-income area, there's probably not going to be a lot of consumer testing of the service. Are you going to be testing it on your own?

CR: We'll have testers. We plan to load up the network with a variety of user types. We actually have eight or nine different products that we are planning to offer for all different types of users, small businesses, consumers, and government workers. We'll have free access in public spaces, and then we'll have fixed wireless solutions. So we'll have a lot of different product types.

The reason of selection of area was more because it provided a representative example of the city. It was just a nice coincidence that it ended up being in a low-income area. The reason we consider that a benefit is that the major driver in Philadelphia was to help close the digital divide, and they're very interested in addressing the low-income household. To help with that we've created a subsidized product for the user at a retail price of below $10 a month.

We'll also be testing that product and see what kind of market reception we get with that price point and to our regular price point. Even at below $20, we're extremely competitive with cable and DSL offerings for someone seeking broadband. And at that price we're also on par with most premium dialup offerings. Yes, it's primarily low-income households, but it has a mix of different income levels as well.

BN: Is EarthLink going to compete with Google for the Wi-Fi contract in San Francisco?