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| Coverage and Availability The idea behind the broadband portion of the stimulus plan is to bolster the existing RUS/USDA (and other federal agency) programs that encourage utility expansion and broadband penetration. The goal of Brian's mapping project is to show the government (and public at large) where there is at least some kind of existing terrestrial wireless broadband coverage, and that WISPs are bigger and more abundant than many people realize. The WISP data is being cleaned up daily as more volunteers get in on the action.
There are allegations of large outside companies that come into an area, claim there is no broadband (due to poor or no penetration by rural telco or cable co for example), get grant money, and either sit on it or deploy a little (if any) service. The problem stems from the fact that there is little or no documentation showing that services exist in the area. The local companies (wireless or wireline) who have a vested interest in serving their areas go to apply for grants in their home territory only to find out someone's already claimed it.
Worse yet, some of the local wireline incumbents claim little or no coverage when they apply for grants when a local WISP is already filling in the wireline co's holes (i.e. no money should be awarded, but it is because the USDA guy doesn't know the WISP exists).
This map and its related data are intended to help correct those problems.
For those who have never heard of fixed wireless, it's terrestrial (earth-bound) and uses some of the same microwave technologies that large entities (gov't & commercial) use for mountain- or building-top communications, just on a smaller scale. Fixed wireless is on par with most cable and DSL systems, and in many places better (not as saturated).
Just like everybody complains about their wireline providers, you're going to get the occasional lousy wireless provider. And admittedly yes, there are those fly-by-nites that give the whole industry a black eye, which is a real shame. There are many good-sized well-run operations that hopefully make up for it. | | |
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| I own a wisp and have had QWEST come into my area with grant money,I had invested over $800,000 out of pocket money for several small towns, I offer free setup and free equipment, I had my network in place 1 year before QWest was awarded the Grant money for both towns, even the person in charge of the comunity broadband grant program said this was unfair,but the big telcos have enough money to push anything through, fair or not, the real thing about this is the large companies go into a small town put dsl in, then do not get any of the other people outside of town, leaving not enough customers left to pay for another isp to put in a network to get these people becouse the cost is too high I feel the grants should pay for cheaper bandwith for the existing isps this would allow us to to compete with QWest and some of the other big telcos and offer the up to 8megs for $14.99 a month | |
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