GERING, Neb. — Wireless Internet Service Providers, or WISPs, see themselves as the saviors of those who are not served, or not served very well, by major Internet service providers (ISPs). Those underserved areas are mainly rural and remote, and many are farm communities.

 

America’s Broadband Heroes: Fixed Wireless Broadband Providers, a white paper released last November, was penned by Matt Larsen, a board member of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Assoc. (WISPA) and president of Vistabeam, a WISP in Nebraska.

According to the paper, WISPs can provide excellent Internet access cheaply and efficiently: “WISPs have been able to deliver badly needed broadband to these places without access to traditional government subsidies or low-interest loans for telecommunication infrastructure.”

Larsen also wrote that WISPs use unlicensed spectrum such as UHF signals, while other companies and groups “sit on” spectrum and refuse to lease it, in order to keep out competition. These include cellular carriers, rural phone companies, schools and speculators.

Despite all this, WISPs are able to “survive and prosper” because they don’t have to spend money to maintain cable or wireline infrastructure, and they don’t have to deal with many regulatory issues. These include right-of-way issues, franchise agreements and legal borders.

“WISPs are succeeding where the subsidy model has failed and are poised to grow their coverage areas to more unserved areas, and provide valuable broadband competition to existing providers,” the paper stated.

Although there are more than 2,000 WISPs nationwide, some places are not served by any. According to the WISP directory, there are 61 WISPs in Indiana, 92 in Illinois, 18 in Kentucky, 53 in Michigan, 51 in Ohio and 23 in Tennessee.

In order to use a WISP, a customer needs an external radio, which the company will often provide. A network cable and computer with an Ethernet adapter installed are also needed, and a router is necessary for multiple computer hookups to the Internet.

In an interview, Larsen said WISPs cover many places that are not otherwise served by any ISP, and more area than one might think.
“In Texas, 82 percent of the landmass is covered exclusively by wireless providers,” he said. “There’s also a real trend in Illinois – 25 to 30 percent of the landmass is covered exclusively by wireless broadband.”

Larsen said big companies don’t want people to know about WISPs; they’d prefer that people only know about the big companies and what they do.

“What we do is different from mobile,” he said. “I think of mobile as kind of toy broadband. It’s good for email and Twitter. Fixed wireless will always be able to provide faster speed. Mobile is not an adequate substitute for reliable broadband service.”

Larsen grew up on a feedlot cattle ranch in western Nebraska. He started a dialup ISP in 1996 and sold it in 2000. He started Vistabeam in 2004.

“A lot of the areas we cover, we’re the only provider,” he said. He added that fixed wireless broadband is equivalent in quality to cable or DSL Internet service.

“Companies like mine are providing reliable broadband service without any subsidies. The speed and reliability of it is great and most of us are homegrown operators. We’re actually involved in the community. It’s sort of like small farmers versus big corporate farmers,” he added.

To find out what WISPs are operating in a given area, go to www.wispdirecto

ry.com