Alex Equiguren dreams of a day when he can open his laptop anywhere on the Northern Neck and connect wirelessly to the Internet at high speed.
All that is required, the technology assistant at the Northern Neck District Planning Commission says, is required is a partnership of local governments willing to spend a few hundred-thousand dollars for some towers and wireless equipment, a few Internet service providers to market the system, and a few hundred subscribers willing to pay a $29-a-month subscription fee.
Northern Neck advocates of wireless broadband see it as a way to enhance economic development by attracting high-technology businesses and jobs.
In just 18 months, Equiguren says, Northern Neckers could be flying on the information superhighway, even if traffic is stalled behind farm tractors on rural roads in Westmoreland, Richmond, Northumberland and Lancaster counties.
Equiguren's wireless dream is already a reality in other places.
Many college campuses have wireless systems. Philadelphia has committed to a $15 million broadband system to bring wireless Internet service to the entire city. San Francisco may follow.
And if Dickenson County in Southwest Virginia can do it, why not the economically disadvantaged Northern Neck?
In 2003, Dickenson became the first county in Virginia to begin installation of a wireless network. Five towers, $600,000, and 100 customers later, the system covers about 270 of the county's mountainous 325 square miles, said Mark Cvetnich, director of operations.
Like their Dickenson counterparts, Northern Neck advocates of wireless broadband see it as a way to enhance economic development by attracting high-technology businesses and jobs.
"It used to be that inferior transportation was considered to be the biggest detriment to economic development in the Northern Neck. Now we think it's the lack of high-speed Internet," says Lancaster County Administrator William H. Pennell Jr.
Pennell also is chairman of NeckTech, an economic development initiative of the planning district. NeckTech was founded in 2003 by a $25,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation and a $15,000 grant from the Virginia Center for Innovative Technology to stimulate business interest in broadband.
Pennell has been visiting local councils and boards of supervisors this month to build support for a wireless network. He again pitched the idea at a Planning District meeting this week at Stratford Hall.
He hasn't asked local governments to commit to a wireless network, and none have. But Pennell told officials gathered at the meeting Monday that he is continuing to develop the idea.
He said he'd like to see it offered by the region's cable TV companies. And he'd like to see a few wireless towers on the peninsula to reach those computers that DSL cannot.
The plan already seems to have worked in an unexpected way. At a 2001 meeting in Warsaw, Verizon representatives said the Northern Neck's 51,000 people scattered over 745 square miles were not enough to justify the cost of installing Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) equipment.
This month, however, Verizon announced the availability of DSL for customers who live within three miles of exchange switches in Colonial Beach, Montross, Hague, Callao, Irvington, Kilmarnock, White Stone and Warsaw.
Outside the Northern Neck, Verizon is also making DSL available to Chancellor, Lake of the Woods, King George, Dahlgren and Bowling Green.
"Verizon's trying to give DSL service away cheaper than I can buy it," said Jim Thorne, an owner of Rivernet, an Internet service provider that serves 4,500 customers from King George to Williamsburg.
Thorne said Rivernet paid Verizon $20,000 to install DSL equipment so Rivernet could offer the service to its rural customers last year.
Rivernet charges $97.45 per month, with $37.50 going to Verizon, for a 1.5 megabyte-per-second line. Verizon will now charge $29.95 for the same line.
Such rapid telecommunication changes worry Westmoreland County Administrator Norm Risavi when he thinks about backing a regional wireless system with county cash or credit.
"Of course we need broadband, but the technology moves so fast that we might end up with a system that nobody wants," Risavi said.
To reach FRANK DELANO: 804/333-3834 delanobigtree@rivnet.net