Wireless access on the way for K.G.

By COREY BYERS and MIKE ZITZ

Date published: 2/26/2008

Slow and cumbersome is how King George County resident Brian Roush describes his Internet connection.

But Roush could be surfing much faster in the not-so-distant future.

Last month, county officials finalized a public-private contract with Virginia Broadband LLC to offer wireless Internet access. The service is scheduled to launch in early April after the first tower behind King George Middle School is equipped to send wireless signals.

Allen Taliaferro, data director for Virginia Broadband, said the company has plans for 11 towers in the county, bringing at least one or two online a month until the first phase is finished in December.

Those towers will cover more than 70 percent of the county's geographic area--and 80 percent of its homes and businesses. A second phase, if needed, would expand geographic coverage to at least 95 percent of the county and most likely 100 percent of residents, Taliaferro said.

The company is contractually obligated to deliver access to a minimum of 95 percent of the county's geographic area. "We feel very good that coverage will be [coming] to parts of the county that wouldn't otherwise have access to service," County Administrator Bryan David said.

The deal comes after more than a year of planning and negotiating, often frustrating residents eager for faster service.

"There wasn't a model, there weren't contracts and technical criteria to follow of how to develop a public-private partnership," David said. "A lot of what we had to do was original work."

Supervisors agreed to allow Virginia Broadband to install its equipment on water tanks, towers and other county infrastructure. They recently approved $52,000 in county funds to cover legal and technical advising costs. And the county has agreed to facilitate up to $740,000 in loans for Virginia Broadband to help with startup costs.

The new service will increase Internet download speeds to broadband levels for residents, schools and businesses in King George that had previously been limited to dial-up speeds.

The county's main employer, the Naval Support Facility at Dahlgren, has both wired and wireless Internet through the military.

David said the Virginia Broadband project means base workers used to having "robust Internet" at work can now escape the frustration of using slower dial-up service at home. It's something he considers a quality-of-life improvement, like the arrival of electricity in rural areas in the 20th century.

"To me that's a real critical point. We're certainly giving them one of the critical tools to be successful in life today," David said.

For Roush, the upgrade can't come fast enough.

"We're just hoping that the county can work with the provider and get it installed in a timely manner," he said. "We've been promised it for the past year, and we're just waiting for it to come to fruition."

Corey Byers: 540/735-1976
Email: cbyers@freelancestar.com

Virginia Broadband charges a $299 installation fee for an ethernet jack to provide Internet service. Subscribers then pay a monthly fee ranging from $49.50 for basic residential service to $89.50 for a business/high-performance package. People who want the freedom to move a laptop around the house, or want to hook up more than one desktop or laptop will need to buy a wireless router and set up a home network. Suitable routers are available at big-box electronics stores for less than $100. State Secretary of Technology Aneesh Chopra said this is the second public-private partnership of its kind in Virginia, and more are on the way. Virginia Broadband is bringing service to Westmoreland County and has been talking to Caroline officials. Chopra called the wireless initiative a "tremendous strategy" for the global marketplace, helping residents compete for jobs, and making the county more attractive to businesses that need to stay connected to customers and suppliers. King George County will get what Virginia Broadband Data Director Allan Taliaferro describes as the "next generation" of wireless broadband access. The non-line-of-sight technology is capable of saturating rolling terrain with lots of trees and foliage with a high-speed broadband signal. The county's hills and foliage would have interfered with the signal broadcast by previous technology. Taliaferro said the county is one of four localities nationwide that have committed to deploying the next-generation equipment. But the wireless equipment deployed in King George will eventually become the standard for all customers, he said. Virginia Broadband could offer download speeds ranging from 400 kbps to 1.2 mbps with the broadcast equipment it has now, "but we'll be offering significantly faster packages in King George," Taliaferro said. He can't say for sure how much faster downloads will be, although the maximum would be 8 mbps. "We expect to see 4, 5, 6, 7, [mbps]." Virginia Broadband won't hit the maximum because it wants to hold back bandwidth for additional subscribers. In any case, the download speeds would increase up to 10 times over dial-up.

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Date published: 2/26/2008

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