PSU Magazine Fall 2004

Such great potential for Portland. But if you want to understand the real source of this effort, you have to look farther south. Ecuador, to be exact. A bout three years ago, Gregory and Snyder were giving a tour of PSU to rep– resentatives from a university in Ecuador. The group was particularly interested in PSU's distance learning center and the ways in which the University was teaching classes through videoconfer– encing over the Internet. They wanted to do the same for their students, or at least improve the way they had been doing distance educa– tion, which was to send out tapes and books to distance learning students. They kept in touch with Gregory and Snyder, and last December paid for them to visit their campus. What Gregory and Snyder saw on their visit was a potentially ideal set– ting for WiMAX technology, but one with plenty of challenges, too. The 18,000 students attending the Universidad Tecnica Particular de Loja are divided between the main campus, situated in the high Andes at more than 6,000 feet elevation, and remote, rugged areas, including jungle villages accessible only by boat. "There aren't many economically viable options for Internet delivery down there," says Gregory, pointing out the high cost and impracticality of bringing "last mile" service to what a typical telecommunications company might consider the edge of civilization. But even the faculty at the main campus have it rough. The campus's satellite access to the Inter– net costs 100 times what Portlanders pay, Gregory says. WiMAX was a new, not-yet-official networking standard, but Gregory and Snyder knew it held promise. They recommended that the Ecuado– rians look into building a network of WiMAX devices that could link cities to remote sites. At the same time, they decided to see what they could do to advance WiMAX testing and use in Portland. On their return to Port– land, the pair gave a call to Nigel Ballard, one of the pri– mary movers in area wireless efforts and a leader in a nonprofit orga– nization called Personal Telco, which has built more than 100 Wi-Fi "hotspots" around Portland. Ballard helped them acquire six early release Airspan WiMAX devices and put them in touch with other area organizations that were excited about the possibili– ties of WiMAX for their own needs. Matt Lampe, chief technology offi– cer for the city of Portland, says the city is sharing its own WiMAX research with PSU. He says the city has a pressing need for a lot more bandwidth to connect employees at more than 90 locations, and WiMAX may be the best way to get it. Mobile WiMAX, which is years down the road, will make police and fire– fighters much more effective in doing their jobs, he says. For exam– ple, firefighters could receive infor– mation before they enter a building on whether that structure contains hazardous materials. Led by a PSU and OHSU partner– ship, the group researching WiMAX obtained a $10,000 grant from the Northwest Academic Computing Con– sortium, whose principal request was that the group share its findings via a Web site. At this point, the group's aim is to find out how far and wide the radio signal can reach from the toaster-size box on the Ondine. It also wants to see if devices could be run by solar cells and batteries. If PSU is to someday devise a WiMAX system that can effectively reach the homes of the thousands of students who take PSU's Internet– based courses, it will need multiple hubs and relay points that will com– bine WiMAX with the shorter-range and more common Wi-Fi technology. Student use of this tech– nology across Portland is a goal that will take a few years to fulfill, Gregory says. One of the first step– ping stones on that path will be reached this fall when standardized WiMAX products start to emerge. In fact, it's a bit premature to call any of this long-range wireless broad– casting WiMAX. Everyone involved in this realm is working with pre– certified versions. The real deal-the thing everyone will be able to officially call WiMAX-is scheduled to debut this fall and will make the technology and its com– ponents cheaper and more widely available. One local private com– pany is poised for that moment. VeriLAN, a six-employee firm with a wireless hub on the KGW-TV tower, claims to be the first company in the nation to deploy the pre-certified technology. Company president Steven Schroedl says VeriLAN serves businesses in a 10- to 12-mile radius from the tower, and will be able to branch into the residential market when prices come down. Portland already has a reputation as one of the top five "unwired" cities in the country because of its many Wi-Fi networks, according to PSU's Amundson. With so many hands working on WiMAX, that position could go up a notch or two. □ (John Kirkland, a Portland freelance writer, wrote the articles "Engineering the Future" and "Breaking Through" in the spring 2004 PSU Magazine.) FALL 2004 P U MAGAZINE 7