Coeur d'Alene Building Reservation-wide Wi-Fi (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

www.internetnews.com/wireless/article.php/3527111

Coeur d'Alene Building Reservation-wide Wi-Fi
By  Naomi Graychase
August 12, 2005

Last month, in a special ceremony attended by HUD (Housing and Urban 
Development) officials, state senators and other local elected 
officials, members of the Coeur d'Alene tribe in Idaho celebrated the 
grand opening of the tribe’s new community technology center (CTC). The 
CTC, which makes broadband access and 40 computers available to members 
of the tribe for free, is the first phase of a multi-faceted plan to 
bring broadband wireless to every corner of the reservation. Before 
doors opened at the CTC in mid-July, there was no broadband available 
to anyone, anywhere on the reservation.

Valerie Fast Horse, IT Director for the tribe, calls the arrival of 
broadband on the reservation “revolutionary.”

“I always compare [the days of dial-up] to the day before we got the 
horse,” she says. “The day before our people got the horse, we were 
using canoes. We were on foot. Our areas of berry-picking, hunting, 
gathering, commerce were limited to the places we were willing to walk 
or canoe to. Broadband increases the areas of commerce, socializing, 
conducting business. It’s revolutionary. It’ll change the way people 
live.”

Fast Horse was instrumental in writing the $2.8 million USDA Rural 
Utilities Service grant for the project, which got the broadband ball 
rolling on the reservation. The total cost of the project is projected 
to be $3.5 million. The tribe, which operates a casino and other 
businesses, contributed the difference between the grant and the total 
cost.

“I’ve been working on ‘digital divide’ issues since 1999,” says Fast 
Horse, who also belongs to two large Indian organizations—ATNI 
(Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians) and NCAI (National Congress of 
American Indians). The ATNI, which consists of 55 tribes, was formed in 
the 1950s and helped to successfully resist attempts by Congress to 
terminate federal and trust responsibilities toward tribes. The NCAI 
counts more than 500 tribes as members in the United States. Both 
groups have been formulating strategies for bridging the digital divide 
and getting high-speed Internet access into rural Indian communities.

“We see not one but four divides,” explains Fast Horse. “Transport, 
distribution, access, and content. In order to bridge the divide for 
our own people, we need to take a look at those things. Most 
reservations are remote, so how do we get our feed in? I was looking at 
ways of solving our problems. Transport was very expensive. Nothing 
existed.”

That is, until the convergence of Wi-Fi technology and the opportunity 
to pursue the grant in 2002. The Rural Utilities Service received 
hundreds of applications for the $20 million in grant money, the 
competition for which was open to all rural American communities (not 
just reservations)—the only stipulation being that the communities had 
no prior access to broadband. In May of 2003, Fast Horse received 
notice that her tribe’s proposal had won the funding she sought. And in 
February of 2004, the funding was finally released, allowing the tribe 
to move forward with plans to build the CTC and deploy and its 
extensive wireless network.

Spokane, Wash.-based Vivato was chosen to build the network, which will 
provide access to all 345,000 acres of the Coeur d'Alene Reservation. 
The reservation includes valleys, Palouse farm country, and the western 
edge of the Rocky Mountains. Vivato was chosen, in large part, because 
of its ability to deal with the challenges of the terrain.

“There’s a void here in these tribal communities,” says Vivato senior 
vice president of marketing Ben DiLello. “Because they are in fairly 
remote areas, they are not able to have any communications. Cable 
companies don’t focus on the markets because they’re not financially 
viable and it’s a huge amount of square mileage.”

Sixteen extended-range Vivato Wi-Fi base stations will be installed at 
four strategically-selected locations. Vivato's system uses phased 
array antennae and a patented PacketSteering technology to boost 
coverage to up to thirteen miles.

“The mountains and valleys are a challenge and an opportunity,” says 
DiLello. “These panels have to be strategically located at places with 
some height, and pointed toward the POP you are trying to cover. If 
it’s a situation where the terrain is such that we have to go through 
mountain ranges, we do it by placing multiple panels, which we have 
done here. Actually, this deployment plays to our strength because of 
the power we have to communicate over a pretty broad area.”

Among the uses Fast Horse foresees for tribal-wide Wi-Fi broadband, are 
streaming video and other high-bandwidth applications, especially those 
which help to teach the ancient tribal language of the Coeur d'Alene.

“Our idea is to put the relevant content on a server and dish it out to 
the people who want it,” she says.

Wi-Fi will be available to the 6,000 households on the reservation for 
a monthly fee, which Fast Horse says is comparable to what one would 
pay for the same service in an urban area. It will be available for 
free at the CTC. The tribe expects to complete deployment of the entire 
network by the end of summer.
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