IT State of Mind

WISP Development

 

Outlining my endeavor to own and operate a wireless Internet service.

Since this project began over a year ago, I've taken a trial and error journey through the many stages of developing a WISP. I thought I might share a little of this experience with you.

This may be the worst idea I have ever entertained, and it has definitely usurped the majority of any and/or all of my spare time. I confess that this endeavor has vastly broadened my knowledge of wireless communication, tower leasing, system deployment strategy, program management, and the legal jargon of the field. That is a fraction of the information I have actually consumed. Not to mention learning backup server software, network security software, setting up commercial pre-N wireless networks, installing PtP links, break fixing servers and workstations, and becoming a WildBlue certified installer.

If only I earned a decent wage doing all of that! This is what drove me to spend every waking moment to develop a WISP. I am perfectly capable of designing, configuring, deploying, and managing such a business. At this time, I own a IT service and support business, but, and of course, the competition has all the local contracts. I have even been driven to the point of considering murder as an option...

At that point, it became apparent that I must do something to secure a decent future. I do believe owning and operating a WISP that will gain the entire local market will be somewhat of a security blanket for a FEW years. It may not be that long before Google gets its way and begins providing 95% of the population of the United States with free wireless broadband Internet, so here I am putting forth my best effort to gain a portion of the market before this massive Google deployment.

At this time I have designed a fairly decent system that should meet a five mile radius requirement. A list of equipment follows:

• (1) RWA 5000 Quad Base Station w/3 cards and 1 open slot for PtP Backhaul Link
• (3) 11dBi 120 Degree Sector Antennas
• (1) New 72' self-supporting tower
• OSBRiDGE customer premises equipment
• Workstations/Servers
• RADIUS package for client authentication
• Protocol analyzer for network troubleshooting and analysis
• RWA management software
• Radio signal propagation analysis software
• Field testing/monitoring equipment

I'm moving right along with this project, and I believe the most difficult issue for me has been developing the service agreement. What a legal jargon nightmare this has been. Now I appreciate those cyber law college classes! LOL If one can learn the legal terminology surrounding intellectual property rights... I'm actually glad, hold a little pride, and have benefited from a college education. I would have never stated that several years ago when I was JOB hunting. FYI... I applied for almost 2500 position between 2001 and 2005 with pathetic results in gaining an IT position. That was truly an insane endeavor.

I'm still going through rounds with the FCC concerning WISP requirements and regulations. I have attempted to acquire this information from the FCC eight times now with NO response at all. NO contact from them at all.

What I can confirm, there is a semi-annual reporting form, and I will be operating in a unlicensed band/frequency. That may be the reason I've received no contact from the FCC, but I do not care at this point. I've made multiple attempts to contact them with no response, and my attorney feels the same about this issue. I will attempt to acquire this information yet again. It seems Uncle Sam is never around until he charges you with a crime!

Well I'm off on todays frustration!

IT and the Poor - Do we care

The venue has hosted many business leaders and heads of states before including Steve Ballmer, Tony Blair, Craig Barrett, Zhu Rhonji and Michael Dell. The auditorium has one of the best video conferencing technologies in the world. Today's audience: the creme de la creme of India's software industry. The speaker: Dr Devi Shetty, a renowned heart surgeon, an award winning hero of the poor who has performed over 13000 heart surgeries of which over 5000 were on children. He boasts of a clientele that has the following mix: Ten percent of India's affluent, 20 per cent of children from 20 different countries, and 70 per cent consisting of people who live on less than $ 1 a day.



Its not just his passion for children or free medical care for the poor that makes Dr Shetty a revolutionary, it is his porfolio that includes telemedicine and a pioneering health insurance plan for farmers that has won him acclaim. He told the audience that the micro health plan insures over 1.7 million farmers at the cost of about 10 cents a month per farmer.

The first part of the hour long talk consisted of "the health of the heart" - a relevant topic for the city's working population where one in four adults is susceptible to a heart attack and where the average age of a heart patient is 45 years and not 65 years anymore. The second part of talk consisted of an overview of the plight of healthcare in the third world and how technology (particularly telemedecine) can solve many problems that the third world faces. The punchlines being that "A solution is a solution when it is affordable to the common man" and "cash counters at some of the hospitals in the world's poorest countries are the cash counters of the multinational pharmaceutical corporations."

Then it was question time. All most no one was interested to know or share in the work of taking IT to the poor till one young lady in the back rows asked in my opinion the most important question of the day: "How can we (technologists) help in the efforts to reach out to the poor?". A question I rarely hear being asked, or given heed to when technologists and business leaders meet.

In Dr Shetty, whom I am hearing for the first time, I saw a visionary who probably is able to marry the challenges of rural healthcare with very simple applications of technology that can make the poor smile. This is real stuff and very different from a Bill Gates signing a donation check for AIDS research in front of cameramen.

I did some research on the fundamental philosophies driving Dr Shetty's life in a day. His prescription on targetting the poor is simple. Firstly, the problem in poorer countries is that healthcare is associated with affluence. It should not be. Secondly, today technology and new economic tools are making it possible to create a model that will disengage every service business from affluence. Thirdly, poor people in isolation are helpless. In numbers, they constitute formidable economic power. [I was reminded of the propositions made by Michigan professor CK Prahlad in his book "Fortune at the bottom of the Pyramid" that advocates selling to the poor as one of most ill explored areas in business modeling]. Fourthly, don't focus on making a ton of money. Believe that by lower margins, you can actually serve a larger number of the poor. In an earlier article he says that every poor man has a rich relative or a rich employer. The sphere of influence of the poor is phenomenal. If you can service the poor, the rich will come. Fifthly, you can build a very successful business model without the help of the stock market. In Dr Shetty's words what is killing businesses is expectations from stake holders. "It is the stock market that leads to bad behavior by executives. For a single quarter of lesser performance, they make conclusions about the management. It is very sad." Sixthly, you need to have a long term view.

In a letter to children after performing his 4000th operation on children in 1997, Dr Shetty includes the seventh prescription "For me this world is such a happy place to live in and in my own small way, I strive to make it happy for others around me who are not so fortunate. The seventh prescription, in my opinion, out weighs the other six and probably is the starting point to think through the other six prescriptions.

Probably the future of IT lies in serving three-fourths of the world's population which hasn't seen the seen the flicker of a PC monitor. But to do that, perhaps what is needed is a heart for the poor - something I rarely see in the IT professonals I meet generally speaking. I find a few who are involved passionately in applying technology for the masses.

One of the questions asked at today's talk sums up the apathy of the affluent towards the needs of the poor and perhaps peculiar of the focus of the global IT industry: Why are your hospitals miles away from cities? The answers are obvious: That's where all of the people who live under a $1 a day live. Far removed from the high rises, the corporate boardrooms and from infrastructural feats of competing nations. And the quest to keep their hearts beating at a cost they can afford is never always fulfulled. One learning for me certainly was "a solution is a solution when it is affordable to the common man". I shall be careful to reserve my excitement if a breakthrough for cancer or AIDS is announced till I put it to this acid test.

South African Pulitzer Prize winner, Kevin Carter, took his own life from depression months after winning the award for this famine picture showing a vulture waiting for a child in Sudan to die as he crawls to the nearest refugee camp miles away

A week before Dr Shetty spoke, Bob Geldof, Live Aid founder announced details of live 8, a staging of five free concerts to be held simultaneously around the globe on July 2nd to raise awareness of poverty. As we ponder on IT and the poor, here's Bob Geldof's perspective as quoted in the latest edition of Time Magazine: "It strikes me as morally repulsive and intellectually absurd that people die of want in a world of surplus"