AIR.U to Use Super Wi-Fi networks to Extend Broadband

Published: June 26, 2012

A consortium of higher education associations, public interest groups and high-tech companies today announced a partnership named AIR.U (Advanced Internet Regions) to deploy Super Wi-Fi networks to upgrade the broadband available to underserved campuses and their surrounding communities. By using unlicensed access to unused television channels (TV band “White Spaces”), universities and neighboring communities will be able to significantly expand the coverage and capacity of high-speed wireless connectivity both on and off campus.

As The Economist noted in a recent article: “Apart from easing bandwidth problems, white-space could lead to a wireless revolution even bigger than the wave of innovation unleashed over a decade ago when Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other wireless technologies embraced the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band previously reserved for microwave ovens and garage-door openers.”

The founding Higher Ed organizations collectively represent over 500 colleges and universities nationwide, and include the United Negro College Fund, the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE), the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education, and Gig.U, a consortium of 37 major universities committed to accelerating world-leading broadband connectivity and services. Founding partners also include Microsoft, Google, the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation, a think tank based in Washington D.C., the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), and Declaration Networks Group, LLC, a newly created organization established to plan, deploy and operate Super Wi-Fi technologies.

AIR.U will focus on upgrading broadband offerings in those communities that, because of their educational mission, have greater than average demand but often, because of their rural or small town location, have below average broadband. The consortium’s initial goal is to plan and deploy several pilot networks in diverse university communities and create a roadmap for the rapid deployment of sustainable, next generation wireless networks as White Space equipment becomes widely available in 2013.

“Expanded broadband access has been an unaffordable hurdle in rural, underserved communities. The opportunity to acquire and leverage spectrum and broadband assets will go far in addressing the competitive disadvantage their absence created,” said Robert Rucker, Vice President for Operations & Technology at the United Negro College Fund. “This effort will enable selected institutions and all the constituents they serve to have the enhanced, sustainable capacity needed to more fully experience the information age and the ability to participate and contribute to it.”

ARC Federal Co-Chair Earl F. Gohl, noting the urgency of providing high-speed Internet access in rural Appalachia, welcomed the partnership. “Appalachian communities cannot afford to wait for high-speed service to be delivered to them. Partnerships like this one put existing spectrum assets to work, and as a result, more quickly provide rural communities the high-speed service they need in order to compete with the rest of the world,” Gohl stated.

Super Wi-Fi networks will transmit on much lower frequencies than today’s Wi-Fi, allowing the broadband signals to penetrate further into buildings and cover much larger areas. The idea for AIR.U arose during the Gig.U Request for Information process, in which a number of rural colleges, who were not eligible to join Gig.U, realized that their constituents needed gigabit connectivity just as much as larger research-based university communities. At the same time, New America and other respondents identified Super Wi-Fi as a powerful, low-cost and wellsuited path for providing this necessary upgrade to rural and underserved higher-ed communities.

“Colleges in rural areas will be the greatest beneficiaries of Super Wi-Fi networks because they are located in communities that often lack sufficient broadband, their needs are greater and there is typically a large number of vacant TV channels outside the biggest urban markets,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Project at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. “This combination of factors makes them ideal candidates for utilizing Super Wi-Fi spectrum to complement existing broadband capabilities.”

“We could not be more delighted that AIR.U was born out of the Gig.U effort, which only further validates the need to upgrade the bandwidth available to communities surrounding our research universities and our colleges throughout the country,” said Blair Levin, Executive Director of Gig.U (a project of the Aspen Institute) and the Executive Director of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. “We firmly believe this deployment of next generation broadband networks and services will be an economic tide to raise all boats.”

Last December the FCC certified the first commercial devices and geolocation database that will be needed to ensure that White Space devices operate only on vacant TV channels and do not interfere with television reception. Nationwide certifications of a variety of equipment makers and database operators are expected in the coming months.

“While California’s urban coastal areas are well-served by broadband, the state’s remote and rural regions are extremely difficult to reach without wireless technology, and many CENIC member institutions are located in these regions,” said Louis Fox, the President and CEO of CENIC. “Maintaining these institutions at the level of connectivity required for 21st century research and education is a constant challenge for CENIC,” Fox added. “Thus, deploying Wi-Fi networks that expand the coverage and capacity of high-speed connectivity for research and education communities both on and off-campus is a crucial part of the CENIC mission, and we’re delighted to take part in AIR.U.”

“With the high concentration of postsecondary institutions throughout New England, we are thrilled to be a member of the AIR.U partnership,” said Monnica Chan, Director of Policy & Research for NEBHE. “At a time when sectors like education and health are booming with innovative, disruptive technology like distance learning and tele-health, deploying Wi-Fi networks in a way that expands coverage for communities is key. Leveraging university communities to pilot this technology is precisely a step in the right direction,” Chan added.

The AIR.U consortium expects one or more pilot networks will be operational by the first quarter of 2013.

For more information or to schedule an interview with one of New America’s experts from the Open Technology Institute, please contact Clara Hogan at 202-596-3368 or hogan@newamerica.net.

Seattle, July 13, 2012 – The Quilt, the national coalition of advanced regional networks for research and education, welcomes new members NJEDge and West Virginia Network (WVNET). NJEDge and WVNET join 29 other regional and state networks from around the country participating in The Quilt.

“By joining The Quilt, NJEDge staff will have the opportunity to work more closely together and to share best practices with peers from other research and education networks, not only on a broad range of IT issues but on other areas of interest to research and education, such as community building and faculty development,” stated George Laskaris, President and CEO, NJEDge.

“WVNET views The Quilt as the best national forum for the exchange of ideas between regional education networks,” according to Dan O’Hanlon, director, WVNET. “As a Quilt member, WVNET will be able to more effectively join with other education networks in shaping the evolution of networks to enhance the service that all of us are able to provide to our constituents.”

“NJEDge and WVNET are highly regarded, not only for their research and education networking leadership in their respective geographies, but also for their contributions to economic development and public service,” said Jen Leasure, president and CEO, The Quilt. “We are thrilled to have them join The Quilt and look forward to a long and productive collaboration towards our shared goals.”

West Virginia Network for Educational Telecomputing (WVNET) is a dynamic service organization providing telecommunications and computing services within West Virginia. Currently focused on state colleges and universities and administered by these entities, WVNET is transitioning to expand its impact by offering services to state government, K-12, public libraries and county government. For more information on WVNET, visit www.wvnet.edu.

NJEDge.Net is a non-profit technology consortium of academic and research institutions in New Jersey. Through its deployment of advanced Internet technologies and digital communication, NJEDge.Net supports its members in their institutional teaching and learning; scholarship; research and development; outreach programs; public service, and economic development. Additional details on NJEDge.NET available at www.njedge.net.

About The Quilt

The Quilt is the national coalition of advanced regional networks for research and education, representing 29 networks across the country. Participants in The Quilt provide advanced network services and applications to over 200 universities and thousands of other educational institutions. Please visit www.thequilt.net to learn more about The Quilt.

Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center Upgrades Bandwidth and Connectivity in West Virginia

PSC collaboration with WVU, WVNET and federal research facilities transforms West Virginia network landscape.

PITTSBURGH — The Three Rivers Optical Exchange (3ROX), the high-performance Internet hub operated and managed by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), has significantly upgraded the link between PSC and West Virginia University (WVU). At the same time, WVNET (West Virginia Network), a network organization that serves schools, government and non-profits in West Virginia, has joined 3ROX, which gives West Virginia clients of WVNET a significant bandwidth upgrade as well as access to expanded research and education resources.

The new 3ROX link to WVU increases bandwidth 64-fold — from 155 megabits per second (Mbps) to 10 gibabits per second (Gbps). “This is a big step forward for research and education connectivity to WVU,” says Wendy Huntoon, PSC director of networking. The upgrade enhances support for clean-energy related research at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory with campuses in Morgantown and Pittsburgh. NETL researchers use the 3ROX link to access supercomputing resources at PSC.

By joining as a participant in 3ROX, WVNET upgrades connectivity from West Virginia K-20 schools to research and education networks such as Internet2 — from eight 155 Mbps links (aggregating to about five Gbps) to two 10 Gbps connections (one from Morgantown and another from Huntington). Among other education and government facilities, the upgraded WVNET bandwidth will link the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) facility in Greenbank, West Virginia, with WVU and the WVU Astrophysics program. From WVU, the 3ROX/WVU high-bandwidth link will then connect NRAO Greenbank with the global astronomy community.

More important to WVNET than the improved bandwidth per se, says Dan O’Hanlon, director of WVNET, is the collaboration with 3ROX. “We’ve wanted to become more involved in the educational community,” says O’Hanlon, “and participating in 3ROX meets our goals. It’s a big gain for West Virginia that we’re now able to collaborate with people who are involved in supercomputing and have world-class experience in running a research and education network.”

The catalyst for the collaboration and the upgrades, says Huntoon, was the 10 Gbps connection that 3ROX provided last year for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Environmental Security Computing Center in Fairmont, West Virginia. “The NOAA grant was stimulus funding,” says Huntoon, “and because we had infrastructure in place, we’ve been able to provide these expanded services very competitively from a cost perspective. We formed an effective partnership with WVNET, WVU, NETL and NOAA and these upgrades — to a total of 40 Gbps within a year — transform the West Virginia Internet landscape.”

More information about 3ROX: http://www.psc.edu/networking

About PSC: http://www.psc.edu