Homemade cluster wireless access sparks interest in rural areas
By RICHIE DAVIS
Recorder Staff

Feb 12, 2005 SHUTESBURY - Paul Borneo built a better mousetrap, and
they came - 22 of his Lake Wyola neighbors in search of high-speed
Internet connections.

Now, he's getting inquiries from other parts of Shutesbury and
neighboring Leverett, and from other towns around the region that are
tired of waiting for fast connections like the one he rigged up using
low-cost wireless technology.

Borneo used a combination of wireless radios and transmitters, along
with cable that he and neighbors set up through the woods, to link to a
900-kilobit-per-second high-speed business line available from "the
last house in the Amherst telephone exchange" last April.

Wyola.net, which the software designer volunteered to set up for his
neighbors using Tupperware containers as weatherproofing in some cases,
has done so well that now Borneo was asked by a friend to set up a
similar system around the center of Leverett with help from a
high-speed T-1 line. All it took was the announcement this week in an
e-mail to the Shutesbury-Leverett Broadband Committee that Borneo was
offering to set up "Speed Beacon" networks elsewhere, and potential
business started crawling out of the woodwork.

"I think I've hit upon a model where if it works here, it can work
anywhere," said Borneo, who has heard from eight people in various
locations around the two towns in the three days since his notice went
out, each saying they believe they can find six other neighbors who can
form clusters from which the grass-roots network can spread.

From Moore's Corner to Leverett Center, from Pratt's Corner to the
Atkins Reservoir section of Shutesbury, neighborhoods are coming
forward to complain about the lack of cable or digital subscriber line
service available in the hill towns.

"There's a definite need, and we shouldn't have to wait so long," said
Peter Corbett of Shutesbury, who surveyed his neighbors after being
told that a Verizon digital subscriber line that reaches three doors
away couldn't be extended to his house. Roughly half of the 30
neighbors he surveyed within a half-mile responded enthusiastically
about getting a high-speed connection, he said.

Borneo, who's begun sticking pins in a topographical map to see where
the clusters are, said, "We're terribly under-served here. We're a
suburb of a university. What are we doing without good, high-speed
Internet? It's crazy."

The neighborhood-by-neighborhood, hub-and-spoke networking he
proposes, which would use wireless transmitters, receivers, repeater
stations and "backbone" connections to link hubs, would be expanded to
include a second T-1 line as soon as there are more than 50 or so
users. And then a third, and so on.

Borneo's solution could go a long way toward solving the
Leverett-Shutesbury committee's ongoing efforts to bring broadband
coverage to the two towns, although coordinator Aron Goldman said it
would lack the near-universal coverage his group has been working on.

The "decentralized, grass-roots, ad hoc approach," said Goldman, has
the advantage of not requiring official endorsement and not requiring a
lot of up-front capital, and it can grow incrementally. But he said it
also seems "a little less reliable" than a sanctioned, established line
into the towns.

In a sparsely populated area with a particularly heavy concentration
of engineers, technology geeks and professionals, Borneo finds himself
working in reverse on the "last mile" problem that seems to confound
telephone and cable providers. He said he's working "from the bottom
up" instead of top-down on a network that he believes can be expanded
as clusters of neighbors come forward.

"It's how the Internet started in the first place," he said.
"Universities tied their computer networks together. I'm looking at
tying neighborhood networks together, then tying them together into a
town-wide local network.

Borneo, who has written software that helps oversee the Wyola network
for which he volunteers his time, plans to charge $160 per four months
of service for homes with a single computer hookup, in addition to a
$300 installation fee.

Borneo, who foresees replacing the radios themselves as the technology
improves, said he's begun to hear from people telling him that he
should look at other under-served parts of the Pioneer Valley.

"I've been driving around here for years looking up at the hills and
wondering, 'How would you get (wireless connections) in here?'" he
said. As people contact him who are willing to build clusters of
neighborhoods, he plans on sticking more push-pins in his topographical
map and try to figure out ways to build wireless networks.

"Wouldn't it be cool to suddenly have 200 or 300 people served?" he
asked. "Boy, do I love building networks."