What began as a way to get government officials to meetings may make Ottawa County an international model for wireless broadband.
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A task force of about a dozen wireless service providers, chambers of commerce leaders and Ottawa County officials this week is putting together a request for proposals to create a countywide wireless broadband system. The governments insist it must be built without public funds.

That's probably doable, according to Tyler Van Houwelingen, founder and CEO of Ottawa Wireless Inc. His company built and operates the system that makes all of Grand Haven a wireless hotspot.

Since that rollout, he's been getting calls from other small cities, and Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Amsterdam and Jerusalem are considering wireless models similar to Grand Haven's.

"Essentially we've already started" unwiring the county, he said. "Grand Haven we see as the first piece."

Because the Ottawa County business model treats wireless broadband along the lines of a public utility, an incentive is there to build the system with private funds, Van Houwelingen said. Providers will be allowed to profit from it just as electric, gas and telephone companies profit from their customers.

"We have to, or else it's not going to fly," he said. "We're not going in to lose money."

What remains to be unwired is the topographically most challenging 30 percent of Ottawa County. (See sidebar on page 7.) And Ottawa Wireless will not bid on the project unless it is sure of a threshold profit, Van Houwelingen said.

Steven Langeler, vice president of Michwave Technologies Inc. in Grand Rapids, is equally cautious. Michwave, by area served, is the largest wireless broadband provider in both Ottawa and Kent Counties. "We can be a major provider because we've got bandwidth," Langeler said. "There's still a lot of discussion that needs to be done on the proposals and all the variables that follow."

"When we started doing Grand Haven, I can't tell you how many investors said 'You're going to lose your shirt.' I'm hearing the same naysayers on the county project," Van Houwelingen said.

"I think it's very possible to do this profitably. Nothing's certain, but at this point we see a viable model to make this happen."

Following one-to-one chats with county planning director Mark Knudsen, providers and officials agreed at a task force meeting Aug. 26 on some broad operating conditions and the business model.

"We all agreed on a competitive RFP process that would list all the provider requirements," Knudsen said. "Whoever builds this system - and we may divide the county into regions so a particular provider can build a region - will have to coordinate technology to create an interface with other systems, and be willing to sell bandwidth on a wholesale basis."

Wireless providers also would have to agree to minimize signal interference with each other. And the system would be open to any provider who might want to join later.

The providers also must work with government to provide services. Knudsen is looking forward to what he thinks is the most cost-effective way of teleconferencing among municipalities.

Van Houwelingen is excited about the prospects of mobile wireless for police, fire and ambulance services. Everyone agrees the system would cost far less than fiber-optics. And wireless, by definition, makes irrelevant arguments over control of the final mile to businesses and homes.

In return for the providers' cooperation, the government units pledged to streamline zoning approvals for towers, poles and easements for new transmission and relay towers, Knudsen said. The governments also would seek loans or grants from the state to help providers pay for construction.

Cooperation among providers and among providers and government should yield an esthetic benefit for Ottawa County. By placing antennae on first-choice engineering sites - and some may be government-owned - and by sharing towers, providers foresee building significantly fewer towers than if they competed.

Knudsen is working with the chambers of commerce to guarantee the providers anchor customers in under-served industrial parks. That component of the plan is still under discussion.

"We've had quite a few people, when we started this effort, say we would never be able to get the providers to sit around the same table," Knudsen said. "Then they said we would never be able to get them to agree on a business model.

"The most difficult task in the process of building this system has been achieved and that was to agree with all the providers and potential customers what the business model would be."

Copyright © 2004. Business Direct Weekly.