Rainforest Telecom meeting report
Nathan Borson
Here is a belated report on a meeting some of us had with Rainforest
Telecom On June 22 at the Gustavus Public Library.
Rainforest Telecom president Wade McKeown and sales manager Randy
Lippert met with GCN administrator Bruce Paige and Gustavus Broadband
working group members Dan Zobrist, Sean Neilson, and Nathan Borson. Here
is what we learned:
Rainforest Telecom was formed recently by the owners of long-time
Juneau-based Jeffus & Williams for the express purpose of providing
broadband network connections to rural northern Southeast Alaska and
beyond. Their first big project was the Kensington Mine. They provide
service in Juneau and they are currently well along in getting service
to Hoonah. They are building their own microwave repeater network so
anyone on their system will have very high-speed, low-latency
connections back to Juneau. No satellites are involved and Juneau has
Internet access via fiber-optic cable so Rainforest Telecom's customers
will have extremely fast and responsive Internet service. The network
can also support many other applications, from telephone service to
cable TV.
This summer Rainforest Telecom plans to get their Hoonah Mountain
repeater site up and also intends to install a site in Gustavus that
will connect to it. In itself this does not solve our community-wide
last-mile broadband need but individual customers will be able to
connect to the Rainforest Telecom site for high-speed access. To date,
Rainforest Telecom's customers are all businesses, and the quality of
service and prices are higher than a residential or home office user
would typically want. However, they are open to serving residences
either directly or through a distributor such as the Gustavus Community
Network. I expressed to them that GCN would like to be one of their
first customers in Gustavus, as their Internet service would be superior
to what we get by satellite now. Again, this change alone would not
bring broadband to anyone who does not have it already, but both dial-up
and broadband GCN customers would notice a performance improvement when
we switch from satellite service to terrestrial broadband.
The last-mile broadband problem remains: how do we bring this high-speed
Internet from one location in Gustavus to all residents? Wade was
pessimistic about wireless. They have tried 900 MHz in Juneau
(Motorola's Canopy system) and found that it does not go through trees;
a single spruce tree cut off their connection between two buildings in
Juneau. They thought the solution for Gustavus might be buried fiber
optic cables to neighborhood wireless access points, starting with the
most populated areas and gradually building out over a period of years
to serve more of the community. This was not the inexpensive magic
bullet solution that the Gustavus Broadband group had been hoping for.
More research and planning is needed to address this problem and
Rainforest Telecom intends to work on it. The Gustavus Broadband group
will assist by supplying background information and helping with local
logistics.
We also discussed the roles of the City of Gustavus (Gustavus Community
Network) versus Rainforest Telecom. While the Kensington project
involved some joint ownership of facilities, Rainforest Telecom
generally is a private company that finances its own construction, owns
and operates all its facilities, and provides Internet access directly
to its business customers. This would be different than the
community-owned network GCN has at present. However, Rainforest Telecom
and the Gustavus Broadband group are both open to any arrangement and
expressed a willingness to work together in whatever way delivers the
best and most affordable service to the customers. It seems likely that
the first step will be for Rainforest Telecom to provide upstream
Internet access to the Gustavus Community Network, with GCN continuing
to serve most end-users. Rainforest Telecom would also provide service
directly to some high-volume users. Who would build the last-mile
broadband network and serve GCN's current customers in the long term
remains an open question. GCN could hire someone like Rainforest Telecom
to design and/or build a community-owned network, or it could be some
sort of public/private partnership, or Rainforest Telecom could take
over GCN's operation and GCN could cease its operation altogether. The
main concern expressed by the Gustavus Broadband group was that service
be affordable for residential customers. Given the likely high cost of
building a last-mile broadband network, some sort of public funding
might help to keep basic dial-up and broadband service in the price
range it is now.
Everyone in attendance found this to be a very helpful and educational
meeting and expressed satisfaction and a willingness to continue working
together. Wade and Randy said this is just the beginning and there will
be more discussions and meetings to come.
Nate
Thomas McLaughlin
I just got back from Seattle on Friday so have been out of the loop. Sounds like the meeting with Wade went well. I think we should take a hard look at having Rainforest provide the fast internet access and we could work on providing the last mile from there. At least we would then have a good infrastructure to build on.
Buried fiber would be really nice but expensive. Maybe there are some grants out there we could look at to help us out with the initial cost.
Thanks,
Tom