Go Michael!

From: IndigenousNewsNetwork@topica.com

Tue, 29 Jun 2004

Go Michael

Shortly after dawn, Michael Peralta and four companions hauled the
sacks of concrete, the five-gallon jugs of water and the picks and
shovels up the mountain where few people ever go.
Near a sunning rattlesnake and high above the scatter of little
houses and trailers below, they built a 20-foot-high tower,
unremarkable in design but not in importance.
In this rocky land of Indian reservations, cell phone service is
spotty at best. Cable television is non-existent. Electricity came to
some homes just a few years ago.

But the new tower isn't for any of that.

It's for something that some people here think is more important:
high-speed Internet service that will link 13 local tribes to the
World Wide Web.

Just as wireless "hot spots" are giving laptop computer users access
to the Internet from places they never could before, wireless
Internet delivery systems are bringing high-speed Web access to
places left behind by the Internet revolution.

"For many people here, especially kids, the reservation is all they
know," explained Peralta, who is helping oversee the project called
Tribal Digital Village. "This is helping our people connect to the
rest of the world."

Except for a few multimillion-dollar casinos, there is little
industry and few jobs on the Southern California reservations.
Unemployment runs about 50 percent. Many of the 7,600 or so residents have never used a computer.

"This is basically a Third World country," Peralta said. Bringing the
Internet to the reservations, he said, "will hopefully create some
job opportunities and education opportunities people here never even
knew about."

Wireless broadband systems like the one Peralta is helping build are
different than Wi-Fi networks used with hot spots. But they're
changing the world's relationship with the Internet just as
dramatically.

At a Federal Communications Commission forum on wireless broadband in Washington in May, Chairman Michael Powell called the technology a necessary step toward reaching a "Holy Grail" of delivering high-speed Internet service to everyone in America.

Powell said wireless broadband could become just as important as the
two main high-speed delivery systems today -- cable modems and
telephone digital subscriber lines, or DSL.

"I will give anybody who has the possibility, the opportunity and the
entrepreneurial spirit to develop a broadband platform the chance to
bring it to market and deploy it to consumers," he said at the
meeting. Just a few months earlier, Powell took time out from a trip
to San Diego to visit the Tribal Digital Village program.

In addition to such home-grown systems, several companies now deliver

high-speed Internet service through wireless broadband systems.
Roswell, Ga.-based Tri-State Broadband Inc., for instance, recently
began wirelessly delivering high-speed Internet service to the little
town of Adel, Ga., near the Florida border.

In Texas, Wireless Frontier Internet Inc. recently announced it has
been selected to deliver high-speed Internet service to rural Real
County, west of San Antonio, in the same way.

Other companies, such as Rhode Island-based TowerStream, are selling high-speed service in big cities such as New York and Chicago to businesses looking for cheaper alternatives.

Telecom industry titan Craig McCaw launched one of the most ambitious attempts at wireless broadband service in June.

McCaw announced he was starting Clearwire Inc. to offer service in
Jacksonville, Fla. and St. Cloud, Minn. later this year.

Eventually, McCaw said, he would roll out the service nationwide --
putting him and the nascent wireless broadband technology in direct
competition with cable and telecom companies that now dominate the
Internet delivery business.

"We come into this opportunity with our eyes open to the challenges
and difficulties associated with competing against giants in the
communications arena," McCaw said in announcing the venture.
McCaw is best known for creating McCaw Cellular in the 1980s, which
he and his brothers later sold to AT&T for $11.5 billion. But he also
has had a few failures -- most notably telecom company XO
Communications, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection two
years ago.

Andrew Kreig, president of the trade group Wireless Communications
Association International, said McCaw's bold play may be just the
shot in the arm the wireless broadband industry needs.

"It's a vindication of what a lot of us have been working on for a
number of years," Kreig said. "It shows that wireless broadband does
have a lot of great capabilities in this environment today."
Wireless broadband technology has been around for years, but has been left in the dust by cable and telecom companies, said Lindsay
Schroth, an analyst with technology research company Yankee Group.
Today, less than 2 percent of high-speed Internet users get their
service from wireless broadband, Schroth said. More than 90 percent
get their service from cable or telecom companies.

(Cox Communications, a sister company to Cox Newspapers and Cox News Service, sells high-speed Internet access over its cable system.)
Even with the backing of heavyweights such as McCaw, Schroth predicts the technology will always take a back seat to cable and telephone. Wireless broadband equipment can cost up to 10 times what cable or DSL modems cost, she said.

"I just don't see it happening," she said. "There are lots and lots
of costs involved in building a huge network just to try and compete"
with cable and telecom companies.

Where wireless broadband does make a lot of sense, Schroth said, is
in rural areas that don't already have other good options for
Internet service -- like the reservations in Southern California.
Tribal Digital Village got its start with a $5 million grant from
Hewlett-Packard Co.

Since then, Peralta and his colleagues have received federal funding
to help build out the system.

Eventually, the tribes involved could make money from the network by
selling high-speed Internet service to local businesses and
residents, Peralta said.

He also envisions using it for voice over Internet telephone service,
potentially eliminating the need for traditional phone lines and
cellular service.

"Because it will be tribally owned, it will really empower the people
here," Peralta said.
"We've been the government's foster child for almost 200 years," he
said, "but with this we're enabling ourselves. We're creating our own
opportunities."