Letter to the Editor

Wireless Internet here in Berkshires

Berkshire Eagle
September 3, 2008

Scott Stafford's August 29 front-page article about Verizon's expansion of what it calls "highspeed" Internet service to rural Western Massachusetts communities appears to be merely an elaboration of the letter in the August 24 issue from Verizon's media relations representative, Phil Santoro. It does not examine deeper underlying issues or put the Verizon announcement into a broader, independently examined perspective. Here, I address only one such example.

Taken together, Stafford's article and Santoro's letter continue to perpetuate the notion not only that Verizon is the only Internet service provider in the area, but also is the only one aggressively expanding its service. Neither notion is correct.
I am a happy customer of Great Barrington-based WiSpring, Inc., a wireless Internet service provider that is one of many such companies across the U.S. using this leading -edge technology.

The service, which unlike satellite Internet is weather independent, requires only line of sight between an unobtrusive antenna on one's home or office and a transmitter at a higher elevation elsewhere. There are several transmitters already in the area. Service to five Southern Berkshire County towns has been available for more than two years, and with the imminent completion of yet another transmitter in Alford, that range will be expanded.

Most important, wireless Internet speed is 33 to nearly 100 percent faster than the nominal 768 kilobits/second (kbps) DSL speed. My service is rated at 1,000 kbps (higher speeds are available at additional cost), and I routinely see speeds reaching up to 1,400 kbps. Reaching the top 768 kbps speed of DSL, which travels over Verizon's copper-based voice transmission lines, requires nearly noise-free conditions; any noise on the line will reduce that speed.

As just about any Verizon telephone customer knows, noise-free phone conversations are nearly unattainable; in most cases, the parties sound like they're on opposite ends of the world. I won't go into my own many failed attempts to get Verizon to fix this. The result is that even potential Verizon DSL customers who are within the ca. 3-mile distance from a central office required for the service will rarely if ever experience the highest possible DSL speed; in the worst case, the
speed will be comparable to the best dial-up service.

If the county's un- and underserved communities are truly to benefit from the Internet, they have to have the most modern technologies, ones that are scalable to a growing subscriber base and are easily updated as new technologies emerge. Wireless Internet is one of several possibilities.

DSL is most definitely not; I will go nose to nose with any Verizon representative about these points, which I pray the new, $40 million Massachusetts Broadband Incentive Fund will acknowledge.

I urge the Eagle to explore these issues in depth independently so that the newspaper does not risk leaving the impression that it is merely a marketing arm for a particular company.

ROBERT L. LICHTER
Alford