Monday, November 22, 2010

Jungle Broadband

I spent last week in a jungle paradise. For the record, if you have not experienced an all-inclusive resort, I highly recommend it. We stayed a week in what amounts to a small village on nearly a square mile of jungle with beach-front access, 4 swimming pools, over 10 restaurants and countless shops and stores: all included. Oh yeah, and so was the broadband.

This resort was, as I said, in the jungle. No, really. We flew into Cancun, but drove at least an hour to get to the final destination from the airport. This place made the rural broadband challenges of the U.S. Western Plains look like upper Manhatten.

Add to that, the resort was actually built some time in the mid-70's, over 20 years ago. At the time, provision was made to route electrical and plumbing from one building to the other across the complex. It wasn't until the 90's that the resort decided that telephone was a must-have in the guest rooms in order to remain competitive. Needless to say, however, trenching the jungle floor post-construction in order to lay cable was not an option. The camouflaged above-ground conduits were noticeable, but not mood-killing.

But telephone would soon prove not enough. The wealthy American business elites vacationing there demanded access to their email and business data while on this "get-away." So, time for new conduit? Not this time, they said.

Each guest lodging building had a small micro-wave antenna atop the building, nicely disguised and hardly visible. A wireless broadband canopy was cast over the entire resort, beach-side and all, allowing guests to surf at broadband speeds wherever they chose to sip their martini.

Whether your network is a square mile and separated by jungle growth, or its global and separated by mountains and oceans--wireless networking is becoming the mode of choice for the last-mile or local loop connection. Why cable more than we have to? Let Accel provision an antenna system and have broadband up and running in days, not weeks.

Labels: Fixed Wireless Broadband, Rural Broadband