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Two months after initial plans for its proposed citywide Wi-Fi network fell apart, city officials in Rio Rancho, N.M., have relaunched the project, replacing original service provider Usurf with rival provider Azulstar Networks.
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The Rio Rancho City Council voted unanimously to approve the network license agreement with Azulstar, publicly announcing the deal on Oct. 29. According to the terms of the 25-year license agreement, Rio Rancho will grant right-of-way to Azulstar to install and operate a Wi-Fi network blanketing the entirety of the city's 103 square miles, making it one of the largest metro Wi-Fi networks to date. Pricing starts at $19.95 per month for unlimited 256 kb/s service; mobile connections up to 1 Mb/s will also be available.

The Rio Rancho network is not the first citywide Wi-Fi project Azulstar has undertaken. In July, the company announced the completion of an end-to-end Wi-Fi deployment spanning the 5.8 square mile entirety of its native Grand Haven, Mich. Consisting of about 300 Wi-Fi access points and point-to-point radios, with backhaul to a fiber-optic Internet connection via Proxim's Tsunami MP.11a point-to-multipoint equipment, the Grand Haven network (operated under the name Ottawa Wireless) proved so popular that local officials created a task force to explore the possibility of extending its reach across the entire county.

Azulstar was in the midst of working out a deal with another soon-to-be-announced New Mexico city when Rio Rancho went back up for grabs.

"We've been looking for an opportunity in the southwestern U.S. for a long time - we thought it would be a very good growth path for us," said Azulstar founder Tyler van Houwelingen, explaining that the flat, virtually tree-less desert expanses of the region are ideal for Wi-Fi deployment.

The fastest-growing city in New Mexico, Rio Rancho resolved in November 2003 to develop a citywide wireless network, receiving technical assistance and vendor evaluation from Intel, whose Fab 11X computer chip facility calls the area home. Rio Rancho officials eventually settled on Usurf, which agreed to foot the $2 million buildout cost. But after a much-publicized launch in late June, the project quickly splintered - in August, Rio Rancho officials terminated Usurf's license agreement on grounds that the company's revised business strategy no longer complemented the network as the city intended.

"The city was very discouraged when things here fell apart," van Houwelingen said. "They wanted to make it happen, they got a lot of publicity and they knew it was something that would be important for their economic development."

Usurf would not comment on the specifics resulting in its exit from the Rio Rancho project

"We reached a mutual agreement to withdraw our equipment, and we've since re-deployed it in the Denver area," said a Usurf spokesman.

Azulstar anticipates service will go live in about 25% of Rio Rancho by December, with the entire project scheduled for completion by March 2005.

"We do not have a day of pilot testing planned - we can go straight to supplying service," van Houwelingen said.

Azulstar will closely follow the template of its Grand Haven deployment; the company will build the Rio Rancho network essentially from scratch, although it will continue working with Proxim, the backhaul provider also selected by Usurf. A private third-party investor who wishes to remain unnamed will fund the project - according to van Houwelingen, the investor hopes to eventually deploy Wi-Fi across the entire state. The network is also poised to evolve beyond Wi-Fi - just this week, in fact, Proxim debuted new hardware to facilitate migration to WiMAX.

"We wanted to make sure Rio Rancho finds companies that are stable and capable and using technology that is extendable, so in the future as you migrate to WiMAX, it will be a natural migration and not a total overhaul of the technology," said Intel's Bruce Sohn, factory manager for Fab 11X.

In the meantime, Azulstar is looking to hone its present deployment strategy to the point that the company can begin licensing its solution to other communities and providers.

"What we're trying to do with Rio Rancho is create the cookie cutter," van Houwelingen said. "What are the methodologies, what are the processes and what are the systems? We want to roll out licenses en masse."

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