This is an independent report on the installation of wireless at a school-community of Tooksook Bay on the Bering Sea in Alaska. It decisively demonstrates that there are places in the United States where standard commercial telephone services CANNOT serve remote schools, in spite of the myopic ruling by FCC lawyers that the $2.25 billion Universal Service Fund CANNOT be used to buy either no-licence radios or ground station equipment for satellite feeds. We of the National Science Foundation Wireless for Education Field Test Project (http://wireless.oldcolo.com) have intermittently advised former Alaska Lt. Governor H.A. 'Red' Boucher over the past two years on what it would take to get advanced no-licence, spread spectrum wireless devices to solve the *very* difficult problems of linking remote Alaskan schools to the Internet, where dependency on telephone company commercial 'services' - the only thing eligible for USF funding is patently absurd. (Either technically impossible, prohibitively costly, or the perfectly legal refusal by Alaskan telephone companies to provide to extremely remote areas). Boucher created a small company "Alaska Wireless" for the purpose of providing a form of connectivity which, does NOT involve a commercial telecommunications 'service' but the purchase and installation of advanced wireless 'devices' that perform exactly the same function as telco and recurring-cost wires. Since this FCC staff interpretation of the intent of Congress in the Telecom Act of 1996 which set up the fund for 'universal service' to public schools and libraries would DENY many remote schools in Alaska, as well as other rural and coastal states, access to the net, and make a mockery of the 'universality' of this Universal Service Fund, this report below has been communicated to Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) by Boucher and other Alaskan constituents with the recommendation that the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, of which Stevens is a part, and which is the principal Senate subcommittee overseerer of the FCC and the implementation of the Telecom Act, and the Universal Service Fund, will take appropriate action to overturn the FCC legal ruling. TOKSOOK BAY WIRELESS INTERNET PROJECT Abstract by Jim Mitchell, Teacher/Tech, Nelson Island Schools OVERVIEW On December 3, 1997, Rick Erickson of Alaska Wireless, Inc., of Anchorage, came to Toksook Bay. Former Alaska Lt. Governor H. A. "Red" Boucher, the head of the company, had been in touch with us at our school regarding direct internet access in our schools and community. There has been lots of talk across the state about "the last mile" connectivity to the internet in recent years. Mr. Boucher had proposed a test of his company's wireless equipment in conjunction with the impending internet install, and we jumped at the chance to test this cutting edge equipment in our harsh conditions after he told us what it could do. We had been investigating alternative methods of electronically connecting the two schools for several years, and none of the alternatives were viable, due to the length and distance of copper wire which would have had to be strung on telephone company poles, as well as the degree of breakage we anticipated from the rugged weather conditions and constant wind which we experience on the coast daily. We installed the wireless transmission devices at the Nelson Island High School, Abraham Usugan Elementary School, Toksook Bay Health Clinic, and 3 local dwellings of school staff. The wireless connections are from Wave Access of California: two multiaccess BR132 Wavelynx 3.2 Mbps Wireless Ethernet Bridge, connecting the omnidirectional antenna, two grid antennas, and the four single drop wireless boxes to connect the various network hubs. Our direct link internet dish, courtesy of GCI/Astrolabe had been installed a month before by New Horizons of Anchorage. The only thing left was the actual connection to the internet. The following week, New Horizons' software techs came to Toksook and completed the internet software install with the techs at GCI. By December 12, we had internet access throughout the site on all computers connected to our ethernet, both wired and wireless. For many years (I have lived in Toksook Bay for 12,) we have had the dilemma of two separate school buildings, 1/4 mile apart, with no contiguous email or computer communication between the two. The wireless devices gave us an immediate benefit: For the first time, the 2 schools were able to share electronic files together, as well as email across our 2 internet hubs. This produced an immediate rise in productivity for our 25 plus staff members. INSTALLATION: The installation of the wireless equipment was straightforward. Rick Erickson, Alaska Wireless; Richard Taylor, LKSD Technology Coordinator; and Jim Mitchell, LKSD Teacher/Tech assembled and mounted the antennas in or on the various buildings. We assembled the antennas and mounts indoors, as it was already pretty cold outside for the time of the year. At the high school, we assembled the omnidirectional antenna, which looks much like a vhf radio antenna, and the transmit/receive grids and mounts. The equipment struck me as being quite durable, and we all commented how the transmit/receive grids looked like curved barbecue grills, and more than as durable. The grids are of 1/4 inch steel rods cross welded, and about 2 1/2 feet rectangular by 18 inches. The feedhorn is an 8 inch extension out the concave side of the dish midsection. Installation on the outside of the building went smoothly. The antennas mounted above the eave of the roof of the building, and attached very simply with 4 lag bolts each. The antennas sweep the entire village, and while the whole village is at best 1/2 mile square, the antennas are rated for about a 10 mile spread. After inserting the drop wires into the building, we were done. It took longer to put in the lag bolts than anything, because we used a hand socket wrench. All together, it took about 2 hours start to finish, with the bulk of the time in the planning where to mount the antennas, and taking breaks to warm up our hands between hanging the mounts. At the elementary school, the one t/r grid went up even quicker than at the high school. This one took about 30 minutes start to finish. We decided that power wrenches were the only way to go in putting in the lag bolts in future sites. It took less than 10 minutes to mount the antenna to the outside of the elementary building. Before 8pm, we had the service up and running, connecting the high school and elementary via the 3.5Mbps bridges. That evening, we connected a wireless device in my house, which amounted to no more than placing the 10 ounce, paperback sized satlink box with its 4 inch flexible rubber antenna, on top of my Macintosh, and plugging in a 3 foot cable into the ethernet NIC card. After configuring the TCP/IP settings, we had a crisp wireless connection into the school's email network. About 10 minutes, start to finish. The following day, we were very thankful we had finished the outside install the day before. We awoke to 45 mph winds with gusts to 55, and blizzard conditions. Almost 3 feet of snow had blown in drifts overnight. The system was still performing well, and all of the connections were still rock solid. Rick set up the Windows NT computer at the Toksook Bay Clinic to link up with the high school LAN. The PHS hospital had configured their NT box, and it wasn't quite set up to sync with our high school as such. After changing some configuration settings to match the high school's internet parameters, the clinic connected right in to our email system. Rick ran the system through a series of checks to be sure it was locked in. We were done in about a half hour. Richard Taylor was able to get out in the morning to Bethel before the weather went down on the only plane we would see for 3 days. The weather had gone down considerably, by 11am, and no more planes were flying. Rick had planned on flying out on Thursday afternoon, but now it looked like Friday. We continued on the installs of the Principal's unit, and another teacher's unit and by noon, the entire system was in place. I asked Rick to show me what I need to do if the Wireless system goes down after he leaves. It amounted to basically turning off the unit, and turning it back on. I have had to do this 3 or 4 times with no other effort on my part. ( As I came to find out after talking with them, GCI has been extensively testing their server connections to the hundred or so new satellite installs around the state, and are randomly bringing local services up and down in their testing. These appear to be cause of the few drops on the wireless we have experienced.) EVALUATION The AK Wireless system has been online for about one and a half months. It has performed absolutely flawlessly in that time, and has proven itself to be an absolute winner in ease of use, and trememdous throughput rates. It has expedited file transfers and software updates on our network that can be done from building to building, or from home to building late at night. All seven transmit/receive boxes have been online 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, attached to UPS's (Uninterruptable Power Supply, i.e. battery backup devices) in case of power outages. The throughput is so good, you barely notice a difference in speed from sitting in front of a computer connected to a wireless box, to one that is hard-wired into the school's ethernet. With our system of ten pc's, and 25 Macs all in use at the same time throughout the day, there is absolutely no degradation in service, including the clinic and the elementary school, in speedy throughput. I had anticated fast access with intermittent bottlenecks, but this has gone far beyond my wildest expectations. Fast access, and no bottlenecks. It is possible to work from one computer, tap into another on the wireless, download/upload to a 3rd computer on the wireless, and have the 3rd computer pass the information and datafiles back in real time, with little or no loss of speed. I have run Netscape and Internet Explorer in this manner, simultaneously, to try to make the connections degrade, and it simply does not. It is as if you are connected to your own desktop, even though you may be connected through two computers wirelessly. I have connected simultaneously to 3 sessions of first class email, Netscape, and Internet explorer, all at the same time, and the wireless system never dropped a crumb of data. It is really an incredible "plug in" to get the value added benefit of the wired network system. I can best describe it by making the analogy to the use of a remote telephone. Once, you have used one, you're hooked. The Wireless boxes give off very little ambient heat, and are completely quiet in operation. There is no fan, nor is one needed. The grill openings on the top of the box is sufficient for cooling. The boxes are quite well designed from an ergonomic perspective, in that not only are they transparent in operation to the user, but they are also audibly transparent in the work environment. In my home installation, I moved the computer to my office area, and simply ran a longer ethernet cable to where I placed the Wireless t/r box on a windowsill, out of the way. Since no interaction with the box is necessary, it quickly becomes ubiquitous technology, like a pencil. The same is true at the clinic, high school, elementary school, and other houses. There is literally no interaction needed with these transmit/receive boxes, and for those who might have any hesitancy with computer peripherals, this is an extremely well designed piece of equipment for novice to experienced users. Simple to set up, simple to use. We have had the opportunity to thoroughly test the wireless equipment at this point. One week after installation, was Christmas vacation. For 2 weeks straight, I was able to run the wireless system through its paces fully with bulk file transfers from workstation to workstation, and cross workstation. I used the internet extensively downloading large files from the Internet, and America Online, via the wireless connections at the High School, Elementary School, and my home computer. Prior use of modems made downloading 10MB files too costly, very inefficient on time, and virtually impossible to keep a connection from dropping in the middle of a transfer. Internet modem access across America Online, our predominant cost effective ISP in rural Alaska, at 9600 baud was slow, to say the least. Neither our schools, our clinic, nor the housing units in town (we have a population of about 550) are in a close enough proximity to use standard ethernet wired communication for internet/email access to the school. I am convinced that the Wireless technology is the way to go, and over time, will be far more cost effective than any other topology. File transfers among and between shared computers in a peer to peer fashion, do not slow down at all. Local transfers are happening at a rate of around 3 Mbps and faster. On a side note, I am not sure of the compression ratios, but Real Audio on the Internet, going across the wireless units, is CD quality. I live in a district owned housing unit which is an aluminum corrugated sided building on all sides, and roof. I have never been able to receive a radio station in my house in 12 years. The wireless access has changed that. Any computer on our network, especially the wireless equipped computers, can now receive radio broadcasts from around the world using Real Audio radio stations, such as NPR broadcasts. Coupling a Real Audio broadcast with a 10Mb file download, in the background, makes this an incredibly efficient way to do business. The 56kb access of the GCI dishes and the background loading of files at 3.2 Mbps combines to form a formidable cached transfer rate. GCI has said that we may see a doubling or perhaps tripling of the throughput in their dishes by next year. If that is the case, then the 3.2 Mbps may no longer be local only, but also pass through into the actual transmissions of the overall system. Netscape usage shows transfer rates at this time between 36kb and 53kb. Real Audio compressed downloads have shown the same and also upwards of 120kb to 130kb audio clips at times, according to the version 5.0. Real Audio Player. The clinic has been on email with us and the entire DDC system since December 4, 1997, without a glitch, wirelessly. This has had the net effect of bringing the local Health Corporation online with both a WAN run by a Distance Delivery Consortium of school districts, businesses, and government organizations, enabling email communication with all. The further and future benefit is of the 3.2 Mbps local link passing through the compressed 56k direct satellite access dish of GCI. The local Health Aides now have access to the Internet to research medicines and improve the health care they provide to this community. This has overwhelmingly made more of a difference in this village to the positive, as much as when telephones first came into Toksook some 17+ years ago. We will be experimenting with the connection of video cameras to this system so patient care can be taken to the next level, that of live 2 way audio/video distance telemedicine. We have the speed of access here, and from our initial research with the companies, it should work very well. We envision patients being able to be "seen" by doctors in Bethel, Anchorage or the Lower 48 across the internet on a video link. TRAINING AND SUPPORT Both Red Boucher and Rick Erickson, of Alaska Wireless, Inc. have been extremely supportive of this system install. It is their generous efforts and zeal to connect rural western Alaska to the Internet and beyond, which has made all this happen, and their efforts to accommodate good service and support. They have both been extremely supportive of the installation here, and have gone out of their way to check on the system with me on a weekly basis, through phone and email contact. I have dealt with many vendors over the years, and I feel their customer/end user support has been outstanding. Prior to Rick's leaving Toksook in the initial install, he made sure I knew how to fix the antenna system from top to bottom, as well as cabling, in case of damage from weather. Also, he was extremely helpful in fine tuning our school's system to be sure any problems would be minimal or non-existent. Finally, the bottom line. The students. Our students have up to now, only blandly witnessed the internet across slow phone connections at 9600 baud or less. They are now exploring, doing current research, and the obvious "surfing", and loving it. We will begin to see the effect of this technology very soon, in that it will help the students even more, to become self-directed, self-motivated learners in the 21st century. The flame of the Internet candle that has been lit in the students has been long overdue. The elementary school, although 1/4 mile away, is now much more a part of all of our everyday routine in the school day, not just an isolated building of students and staff. They are able to interact with us through email, and the sending of pictures between buildings. They are able to connect to other schools in the state and country and share ideas. All of our students are just beginning to scratch the surface of this texture of life we call the Internet. AK Wireless has been a major factor in bringing this to fruition for us, in the tiny metropolis of Toksook Bay, on the Bering Sea. BEYOND SCHOOL As with any new technology, it doesn't take long for the word to get out. Within a week, parents and community members came to me and asked how they could get onto the Internet from their homes, and if they could call in from their computers at work. I explained to them that the Wireless install, and the USF grants were dedicated to USF compliant organizations only, but that would be something to be considered in the future. Politically, and educationally, the greatest thing we could do for the village of Toksook and all villages in this region at this point in time, would be to begin thinking about the mechanism for tapping the community into the servers at the high school. If our purpose is to educate the children, many studies have shown that when computers enter the home, reading abilities of parents go up several grade levels, not just the children. An educated parent, means an educated child. In indigenous (and rural) populations that are in remote outposts like Toksook Bay, as well as all of the villages in the Lower Kuskokwim School District, access to the Internet will and has been shown to have a profound effect on the continued education of the out of school population. It is difficult to explain to someone how to ride a bicycle, when they have never seen one. The Internet is the bicycle which we must now open the shop and distribute to the community, so that they too, may learn to ride. The benefits of access to the community at large, either by multiplexed telephone lines into the school's LAN (Local Area Network) or Wireless boxes, should not be debated, nor ignored, for too long. I see this as the next step in "the last mile" discussions. The companies who have given us access to these new technologies at their own cost, have helped to prove that without using grant funds, we have provided testing of the technologies where they have never been thought to work before, either logistically, or cost effectively. These new and beneficial technologies will serve to benefit the educational community at large and other USF compliant organizations, and help to bring in the technologies of the future heretofore not available to remote access areas such as ours. Jim Mitchell, Toksook Bay, Alaska 99637 (907) 427-7314, (907) 427-7815wk JimMToksok@AOL.Com jmitchell@toksookbay.lksd.schoolzone.net