Colorado's "cursor cowboy" helps
schools go wireless and save money

By Lars Kongshem

Like a giant terrestrial antenna, the majestic silhouette of Colorado's Pikes Peak probes 14,000 feet into the sky a few miles west of Colorado Springs. Perhaps it was the sight of this mountain that inspired the brilliant inventor Nikola Tesla to pursue his goal of transmitting electrical power without wires by reflecting electricity through the Earth's interior, causing man-made lightning to jump 130 feet into the air from his lab here at the turn of the century.

Though Tesla is said to have powered light bulbs wirelessly at a distance of 25 miles, he never achieved his dream of ubiquitous electricity for all. But nearly a century later, the Colorado Springs area once again is home to visionary ideas about wireless transmissions. This time, though, what's coursing through the ether isn't electricity but digital computer data -- the energy that powers the information age.

At the foot of Pikes Peak lies Colorado Springs' historic Old Colorado City, once a wild town where gold prospectors from nearby Cripple Creek would come to lighten their pockets in saloons, brothels, and opium dens. But walk into the working-man's watering hole known as Roger's Bar today, and you're more likely to run into a portly man in his late sixties, sporting a white beard, Stetson hat, cowboy boots, white shirt, and string tie, sending e-mail from a palmtop computer connected to a sleek black wireless modem with a stubby antenna.

This cursor cowboy is Dave Hughes, and as he sees it, the key to affordable computer networking for schools can be found in free, public spectrum that belongs to everyone. A highly decorated retired Army colonel who led troops into combat in Korea and Vietnam, Hughes has spent the past decade helping schools and rural communities get wired through affordable grassroots computer networks.

"This is where the rubber meets the road," Hughes says, characteristically dispensing with modesty. His track record includes the launch, in the late 1980s, of Big Sky Telegraph, a low-cost computer network connecting 114 one-room schoolhouses in rural Montana.

These days, Hughes is absorbed in a new venture as the principal investigator of a National Science Foundation-funded wireless field test project to hook up rural schools to the Internet using off-the-shelf, license-free digital radios. His mandate is to gather data, find out what works and what doesn't, and then share the information with schools so that others can benefit from his experience. The wireless paradigm fits Hughes' way of thinking: It's empowering, it's grassroots, and it's getting schools connected at a price they can actually afford.

"I believe in things that work,"
says Dave Hughes.

"There's an accepted truism that all schools need to be connected to the Internet," Hughes says. "But the question is, at what cost and at what bandwidth?" Modems don't have anywhere near sufficient bandwidth to allow entire schools to access the Internet at instructionally useful speeds, Hughes points out. Leased T1 lines do offer enough speed -- 1.54 million bits per second (Mbps) -- to connect schools to each other and to the Internet, even for heavy-duty multimedia use, but the lines are far too costly for most schools, he argues.

Depending on a school's location and the distance the line has to cover, telephone companies will charge anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to more than a thousand dollars per month for a T1 line. That fee pays just for the conduit, not for the Internet service, and in some rural areas, T1 lines can be hard to come by. In contrast, a point-to-point wireless link can provide bandwidth surpassing T1 for just the up-front cost of the radios and their installation -- typically ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 -- with no recurring charges after that.

The proposed universal service discounts for schools may lower wired connectivity prices for schools before the end of the year, but the economic benefits of wireless will remain intact because of the absence of recurring service charges. In addition, the purchase and installation of wireless connectivity solutions will also be eligible for the education subsidy, FCC officials say.

"The new pork for telephone companies is education," Hughes says, pounding the table with his sizeable fist for emphasis. "Wireless is their first real competition, and it's going to force them to become more responsive to their customers."

Look Ma, no wires

The technology that sparks Hughes' fascination with wireless computer networking is known as "spread spectrum," and, like the Internet itself, it was originally developed for military use.

Unlike conventional radios that send analog signals at a single vulnerable frequency, spread-spectrum radios digitize the signal into small packets of data that are transmitted over a wide frequency band. On the receiving end, the radios use digital signal processing to separate the packets of data from ambient noise and interfering signals, reassembling the transmission in its entirety. The computer processing power built into the radios helps ensure that the entire signal comes through, even when part of the transmission is blocked by interference.

Current FCC regulations limit spread-spectrum radios to a meager 1 watt of power and confine their transmissions to so-called garbage bands already occupied by garage door openers, cordless phones, microwave ovens, and other potential sources of interference. Yet despite these regulatory limitations, the inherent superiority of the technology allows the radios to cover 10-mile distances at speeds up to 2 Mbps. At slower speeds, the radios can reach as far as 30 miles, and with the use of additional radios as relays, the range can be extended even farther.

In part because spread-spectrum radios cause less interference, the FCC requires no license for their operation. Prices range from under $1,000 to several thousand dollars per unit, but Hughes expects those figures to fall drastically as a consumer market develops and the manufacturers benefit from economies of scale.

"Think how far this technology can go," Hughes enthuses. "The limitations are all man-made, and yet it's remarkable what has been done [given the current FCC rules]." With future advances in processing power, he speculates, "billions of these radios could coexist in the same spectrum."

Like Tesla, Hughes is thinking Big Picture: A large chunk of the broadcast spectrum could eventually be shared freely by the public with no fear of interference, spawning a myriad of empowering and inexpensive grassroots networking applications that would bring the last mile of the infobahn to schools and homes.

Information super-airway

To illustrate how capable this technology already is, Hughes sends visitors across town to Colorado Springs' School District 20, which recently completed installation of a state-of-the-art wireless wide-area network linking 24 buildings over an area greater than 100 square miles. The system is much less expensive than a wired network would have been, and faster to boot.

"Not only is it a powerful system, but the economics of it are phenomenal," says Rich Pattison, the district's technology coordinator. By choosing wireless over wire for the wide-area network, he says, the district saved $899,000 up front -- and continues to save $12,000 every month on recurring charges it would otherwise have paid the telephone company for high-speed connections between school buildings.

All the local-area networks internal to school buildings in the district are conventionally wired, however, because the same economies don't apply to wireless when there are no recurring costs to save. The district's connection to the Internet is via twin wired T1 lines, but that's only because the Internet service provider was unwilling to provide a wireless link.

"The concept was to put in a powerful infrastructure that no one notices because it just works," Pattison says. The system, which employs both 2 Mbps spread-spectrum and 10 Mbps microwave links, was installed by 37-year-old Mike Willett, an award-winning radio engineer and computer whiz whose company Open Minds specializes in wireless networking solutions. Willett also happens to be a parent in the district.

Radio waves at such high frequencies and low power levels need direct line-of-sight to reach their destination, so Willett engineered the network around the topography of the area, which includes rolling hills and valleys. His solution has radio signals criss-crossing the school district, reaching several schools by means of relay stations.

Engineer Mike Willett
adjusts a wireless link.

"I spent many hours sitting on school roofs, thinking, 'Well, I could do it this way, or I could do it that way,'" Willett says. The original impetus for the network was to give every school access to the district's library system, but the scope of the installation was soon expanded to include Internet access. Each school now has its own web server, and every student and staff member has an e-mail address.

Like any technology, wireless has its own set of practical considerations. Because each installation is different, a site survey by a competent professional to determine what will work and what won't is a crucial first step. A watchful eye has to be kept out for trees, which can cause trouble if they grow into the transmission's line-of-sight. "We joke about chainsaws in the middle of the night," Pattison laughs. Rain can theoretically be a factor, because raindrops are the same size as the wavelength the radios operate on, but in a recent downpour, there was no degradation in performance, Willett says.

Willett chose to use a mix of spread-spectrum and microwave because each has its advantages, he says: Although microwave is faster, it is more expensive and requires a lengthy FCC licensing process to ensure that other microwave installations in the area won't suffer interference. Spread spectrum requires no license, so you can be up and running the same day you purchase the equipment, and the radios can be moved to other locations on a moment's notice.

Asked whether the radio waves might present a safety concern, Willett and Pattison shake their heads emphatically. "We're operating at less power than a CB radio," Pattison says.

So why aren't more school districts going wireless? "Nobody knows about it," Willett says. Clearly, that will change in time, as the specialized type of radio and computer expertise Willett has to offer becomes more widely accessible to school districts. That's when telephone companies will start to worry, Hughes predicts in his plainspoken way: "The dumb bastards don't even realize the threat that [Willett] poses to them."

The wireless valley

Stretching a hundred miles long and fifty miles wide, the San Luis valley is -- at an altitude of 7,000 feet -- the largest alpine valley in the world. Several hours' drive southwest from Colorado Springs, the valley is surrounded by 14,000-foot peaks, including the Sangre de Cristo range, so named by the Spanish because the red sun reflecting on the snow-covered mountains looked to them like the blood of Christ. Lying just north of the New Mexico border, the valley is a high-water mark for the Spanish influence, and the cultural legacy remains to this day.

"This is a magical place to me," Hughes says from behind the wheel of his rental car. "The San Luis valley is just magical. But you can't eat the sunshine." Hughes chose this area as the rural proving ground for the NSF wireless field test, in part because of the unique technical and cultural challenges it presents, but also in part because he genuinely wants to give its inhabitants access to technology that might help them escape poverty.

Bringing T1 wired access to all schools in the valley would cost $1.2 million over 10 years, Hughes estimates, but wireless could do the same job for $134,000. The NSF field test isn't large enough to do the whole job, but Hughes is out to prove a concept that he hopes will be replicated by others.

Valentin Villasenor was the
first student in the valley to
use wireless Internet access.

Last May, Hughes established a wireless connection from the roof of the Internet service provider in the town of Alamosa to a middle school in Monte Vista, 17 miles distant. Dirk Oden, a science and language arts teacher there, is using the connection to have his students produce multimedia presentations using resources from the net. "He's one of our star teachers," Hughes says. "He knows how to grab something and run with it right away to do something that is educationally effective."

A similar, though longer, link from Alamosa to the town of Center was unsuccessful, however, when Hughes and his colleague Dewayne Hendricks ran into unexpected difficulties with the topography of the area.

"I didn't think it took this much radio engineering expertise to get these things to work, but that's why we're doing the test, and it's a significant finding," Hughes says. "It shows how crucial a site survey is."

Today, he's on his way to the tiny town of San Luis -- the oldest town in Colorado, located in the state's poorest county -- whose 850 proud inhabitants trace their ancestry straight back to the Spanish conquistadores and still speak an ancient Spanish dialect. Through the NSF grant, Hughes is bringing wireless Internet access to the town's one-building school district, but he's not stopping there. With another small grant from the Colorado Advanced Technology Institute, he's extending the wireless access to the rest of the town and training the entire population in accessing as well as publishing information on the web.

"This could be a spectacular failure," Hughes muses as he drives south through the valley. "They have to suspect my motives; I'm an Anglo." To minimize any misgivings among the locals, Hughes is volunteering his time on the community networking part of the project. "I'm doing it pro bono, but I'm learning a lot from this project."

Then there's the religion factor. "In Montana, communities are held up by a three-legged milking stool -- business, government, and education," Hughes says. "In San Luis, the fourth leg is religion." Accordingly, the wireless Internet access will be extended from the school to public walk-up terminals at the local church parish hall, the county seat and the town hall, a local art gallery, and a cultural center. "I attempt to fit technology to cultures, not cultures to technology," Hughes adds.

A school is a natural hub for a community networking project like this, Hughes says. "If you solve the problem of school connectivity, you've solved the problem of community networking, because schools are where people live."

It's lunchtime as Hughes pulls into San Luis, so he heads straight for Emma's Hacienda, which he calls "one of the most powerful places in town." Sure enough, two of the people who will be instrumental in helping the project succeed are inside: Superintendent Robert Rael, whose school will serve as the hub of the community network and host the town's web site, and sculptor Huberto Maestas, in whose world-class gallery will stand one of the walk-up Internet terminals.

"I think computers are a necessary evil," Maestas laughs. Then he gets serious. "Some people who are too into computers lose their sense of self," he says earnestly. Nonetheless, he supports the community networking project. "It would be great if we don't have to pay the telephone company to use our own computers to connect to the Internet."

The town of San Luis lies directly on the shortest driving route between Denver and Taos and has much to offer, including Maestas' masterful sculptures depicting the 12 stations of the cross on a footpath leading up to a picturesque chapel overlooking the town. The web site will help publicize the town and, hopefully, bring more tourism dollars here.

Dave Hughes is bringing
wireless Internet access to
the town of San Luis.

The plan is for high school art students to design the web pages in collaboration with the community, Superintendent Rael says. "By talking to community members about how the town wants to present itself, they'll learn more than just how to do a web page," Hughes adds. "They're going to learn what the town thinks of itself."

After lunch, Hughes is marching around town, gathering the troops for a meeting about the project. There are a lot of components to this plan, a lot of things that can go wrong, and Hughes is the glue that is holding it all together. The grant monies won't pay for everything, and the town itself has to supply the computers. That's not trivial in a town where the ambulance didn't start the last time it was called upon.

As for the Internet access, the antenna stands ready on the roof of the school building, but there's no line-of-sight between San Luis and the nearest Internet service provider in Alamosa. The solution is to put a relay radio on an existing cellular tower next to the chapel on the hill, but that will call for delicate political maneuvering to get permission from the phone company that owns the tower. From the tower it's a 30-mile shot to Alamosa, a distance that is right on the ragged edge of the capability of spread-spectrum radios, given the power levels allowed by the FCC. With the relay slowing things down, Hughes expects to get 56 Kbps throughput to the school.

"This is about as tough a town in America as you could hope to find to hook up to the Internet for education, business, and community," Hughes says without significant overstatement. "That's why we're doing the test here. If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth a test."

The next day, Hughes is in Alamosa, establishing a half-mile wireless link from the campus computing center of Adams State College to a classroom in Evans Elementary School, powering through the walls of 10 buildings. The installation takes just a few hours, and Hughes clearly savors the satisfaction of knowing that teacher Roger Quintanilla will immediately be able to use the zippy 57.6 Kbps connection to teach the kids in his fifth-grade class. The radio could easily double that speed, but the terminal server at Adams State won't go any faster.

Hustling his bag of equipment out to the car, Hughes says, "Well, I guess that was a pretty good infantry exercise. We got the job done pretty much on time and under budget." But as the sun sets on the Sangre de Cristo mountains in his rearview mirror, Hughes gets thoughtful.

"I have to ask myself, 'Am I just plowing in the sea here?' Maybe the computer is just the pickup truck of the information age. They've got roads, but the pickup truck didn't get them out of this valley."

But then the fire returns in his eyes: "It's too bad we had to throttle back on the throughput because the damn terminal server wouldn't support the speed of the wireless modem," he growls. "Ha! What does that tell you!"

And with that remark, the cursor cowboy drives off into the sunset.

Lars Kongshem is an associate editor and webmaster of Electronic School and The American School Board Journal. Photography by the author.

For more information:

NSF Wireless field tests

Wireless LAN/MAN Modem Product Directory

List of spread-spectrum wireless LAN, modem, and consumer devices

Amateur Radio Spread Spectrum Communications Page

Open Minds