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NEWS

Iranian builds world's largest hotspot, in rural Oregon

From "Wireless Internet blankets vast, near-empty territory" by Rukmini Callimachi, Associated Press via the Arizona Daily Star, 26 September:

"HERMISTON, Ore. - Here in an area spanning 700 square miles on the northeastern edge of Oregon - the site of a vast wireless Internet cloud - farmer Bob Hale can prop open a laptop among the scrub brush and check his e-mail. He can also check the moisture level of his onion field while sitting inside his air-conditioned truck. And as the jack rabbits run by, he can watch CNN online or play a video game. Or he can turn the irrigation sprinklers on or off with a keystroke.

"While some of the country's largest cities struggle to offer cheap Wi-Fi access, one of the least populated counties in the nation has created what is billed as the world's largest hot spot, a wireless cloud that stretches over a landscape so dry and desolate it could have been lifted from a cowboy tune.

"Similar wireless projects have been stymied in major metropolitan hubs such as Philadelphia by opposition from telephone giants, who have poured money into legislative bills aimed at curbing low-cost municipal Wi-Fi. But here among the thistle, wireless entrepreneur Fred Ziari faced no resistance from the large providers - who see little gain in such a sparsely populated market - allowing him to build the $5 million cloud at his own expense.

"While his service is free to the public, Ziari is financing the setup cost through contracts with more than 30 city and county agencies and with big farms, such as Hale's, an onion empire that supplies two-thirds of the red onions used by Subway restaurants. Morrow County pays Ziari around $180,000 per year.

" 'Outside the cloud, I can't even get DSL,' said Hale. 'When I'm inside it, I can take a picture of one of my onions, plug it into my laptop and send it to the Subway guys in San Diego and say, "Here's a picture of my crop," ' he said.

"Even as hot spots are mushrooming, with 72,140 now registered globally, only a handful of cities have managed to blanket their entire urban core. Cities from San Francisco to Chaska, Minn., to St. Cloud, Fla., have plans to put their communities under a wireless tarp - but only Ziari appears to have pinned down such a large area.

"Asked why other municipalities have had a harder time succeeding, the engineer replies: 'Politics.'

" 'If we get a go-ahead we can do a fairly good-sized city in a month or two,' said Ziari, who immigrated to the United States from the tiny Iranian town of Shahi on the Caspian Sea. 'The problem is getting the go-ahead.'

" 'The "who's going to get a piece of the action?" has been a big part of the obstacles,' said Karen Hanley, senior marketing director of the Austin, Texas-based Wi-Fi Alliance, a nonprofit that acts as an umbrella organization for wireless efforts across the country. No major players were vying for the action here, making the area's remoteness, which has slowed progress, the key to its advance.

"To date Morrow County, which borders Hermiston and spans 2,000 square miles, still doesn't have a single traffic light. It has only 11,000 people, a number that does not justify a large telecom player's making a big investment, said Casey Beard, the director of emergency management for the county, who was looking for a wireless provider two years ago, when Ziari came knocking. The county first considered his proposal at the end of 2002 and by mid-2003 part of the cloud was already up...

[Wi-Fi: 26 September 2005]