Rural Oregon goes Wi-Fi, blazing trails in technology

03/16/04

HERMISTON -- More than 100 Wi-Fi hot spots dot the Portland area, frequently in coffeeshops or bookstores, allowing the techno chic to tap away on e-mail or surf the Web at high speeds without plugging in their computers.

Like other technologies before it, though, wireless Internet access is moving rapidly beyond the young, urban, tech-savvy customers who embraced it first. In fact, the region's biggest wireless computer network is up and running near the north-central Oregon farming community of Hermiston.

For 600 square miles around Hermiston, anyone with a wireless laptop or PC soon will be able to log onto the Web. EZ Wireless, the company that has started rolling out the service, says its model soon may make high-speed Internet access a reality for anyone anywhere.

"This is so new everybody is trying to figure it out," EZ Wireless President Fred Ziari said of wireless fidelity networks, or Wi-Fi, as they're known. "This is a model we think is going to take off around the nation."

Ziari's broadband wireless network went live last month, initially as a service available to police officers, firefighters and other first responders to emergencies. Soon, he said, it will be commercially available to any area residents in the market for high-speed Internet service.

To make the system work, Ziari, 50, has turned much of Umatilla and Morrow counties into its own Wi-Fi hot spot, similar to the ones available in Portland-area Starbucks and Borders Books outlets, as well as a number of airports, hotels and office buildings.

But users who wander far in those locations -- typically a few hundred feet -- lose their Internet connections, as would cordless phone users who stray too far from their base stations.

EZ Wireless' network, on the other hand, covers an area about 50 miles by 15 miles. It's a wide region of farming and food-processing towns, with vineyards, dairies and potato, wheat and watermelon fields.

As Ziari drove around Hermiston on a recent day, EZ Wireless technician Brad Kincaid, 23, opened his laptop computer in the back seat. With rat-a-tat-tat speed, he checked his e-mail, logged onto a Web-based search engine, called up advertisements for an MG sports car and a Cessna airplane, jumped to an interview with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and, finally, watched a preview for a new movie.

"We're looking at a video over the Internet while driving," Kincaid said gleefully as an action-packed Armageddon-style film exploded on his screen. "Nobody can really do that but us. It is downloading it while we drive."

The potential market for that kind of service is vast. Less than 15 percent of the U.S. population has access to high-speed, broadband Internet, and the figure tumbles to less than 8 percent in the rural areas of Oregon and Washington, Ziari said.

Closing a digital divide

"We have a huge digital divide between the urban and rural areas," he said, adding that telephone dial-up Internet service provides a mere 24,000 to 50,000 bits of information per second. Broadband wireless, by contrast, can provide 11 million bits per second.

That means instant Internet access and the availability of videos, films and other services.

"I don't need to be tied to my desk," Ziari said. "I can go from place to place and still be connected."

The idea of introducing broadband wireless service in the region was triggered by the presence of the Army's Umatilla Chemical Depot, 11 miles west of Hermiston, and the need to connect first responders should an accident or a terrorist attack occur there, Ziari said. About 6.6 million pounds of deadly mustard gas and nerve agents such as GB and VX are stored at the depot, awaiting incineration.

Ziari said the federal Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program wanted a secure, computerized emergency network and had been thinking of tying together a system with fiber-optic cable. Ziari knew a broadband wireless system would be cheaper, and in January 2003 he began mulling the possibilities of creating such a system.

Network launched Feb. 5

Convinced it could work, he began the engineering in June , and workers soon were erecting 66 towers standing 75 to 150 feet tall. The first town in a network that now encompasses Hermiston, Stanfield, Boardman, Irrigon, Echo and Umatilla went online in October, and the network was officially launched Feb. 5.

The federal agency is a core tenant and has purchased two years of service, Ziari said.

"When you stop and think about how quickly this has been done, it has been pretty amazing," said Casey Beard, Morrow County emergency management director for the preparedness program.

Should an accident or terrorist attack occur, the system is designed to monitor any chemical plume drifting off the Umatilla Chemical Depot and determine its direction and speed, Beard said.

The system also makes possible fast, secure messaging among emergency responders. It allows the preparedness program to track the status of more than 200 people wearing chemical protection suits, he said.

Emergency management, security

Police and first responders equipped with compact, impact-resistant PCs linked to the system also have instant access to street maps and floor plans for large buildings in case of a fire or other emergency, Ziari said. Medical personnel can quickly access medical records and X-rays to help patients, he said.

"This community is as prepared as any place in the nation in dealing with emergency management and homeland security issues," Ziari said.

Beard agrees.

"As far as I know, we are the only place in the world that has done something like this," he said, referring to the scope of the computerized coverage, the hacker-resistant security of the system and the types of information that can be transmitted.

Ziari plans to begin working to expand the project this summer, although he won't reveal the communities where he plans to offer the service.

What he wants is a commitment from state officials to provide wireless broadband access to everyone in Oregon, he said. Tigard-based VeriLAN Inc. recently began offering wireless broadband services in the Portland area and some parts of the Oregon coast, but most areas of the state remain uncovered.

"We are right at the beginning of something, a technology breakthrough that is happening in our country and the world," Ziari said.

Beard often is asked how a sparsely settled farming region came to have the Northwest's biggest and most sophisticated wireless computer network. The question usually takes a pejorative tone, and Beard likes to reply that rural Oregon folks can do a few things, too.

"We may not have a Starbucks, but we have a hot spot they would envy," he said. "We've got cyber-cowboys now."