Solving Rural Maine's Bandwidth Issues
Axiom Technologies is committed to bringing adequate bandwidth to Washington County. We are working with the ConnectME Authority, a board established by Governor Baldacci in August 2006 to increase the telecommunications in rural Maine. The core purpose of Axiom's Bandwidth Project is enabling high technology data and telecom services in Washington County. Currently, the products available, types of service, capabilities of those networks and overall impact on local economy and quality of life are limited. One of the primary limiters is the overall capacity and reliability of the link back to Bangor and the Internet. Put simply, there is only one pipe. It is too small and there is no backup or redundancy in the current system.
There is no disputing the positive impact information technology and Internet resources can have within a rural economy. Technology enables new businesses and increases efficiency and profitability in existing ones. For the residential user Internet access is quickly approaching a utility-like status. Having access to the Internet in the home is as expected as having electricity, water and phone service. In the case of the latter it is in many cases even surpassing and replacing it. Axiom does not consider the services it provides as luxury items, but as functional and necessary aspects to both business and home life in Washington County.
Axiom has made great strides in solving the “last mile” challenge in our region. That is: how to affordably deliver broadband services to homes and businesses in a highly rural environment lacking advanced physical infrastructure. Through a blend of technologies, creative application of resources and simple hard work Axiom has effectively overcome that challenge. Now we are faced with a new obstacle; meeting the growing demand for these services in our communities while bottlenecked by limited access to Internet resources in Bangor and beyond.
Currently the link to Bangor and beyond is a single cable run from Machias to Bangor via Ellsworth. The run is in the form of suspended cable on a pole line for most of the length. This alone demonstrates a very basic physical vulnerability to outages. As residents of Washington County we can safely expect two to three major outages a year that affect both phone and data services alike. This is not acceptable and there are many forms of business that cannot tolerate such performance. Additionally, the traffic carried over this facility is in the form of multiple T1 circuits. Individually, a T1 carries 1.5Mbit of bandwidth. This is roughly the equivalent of a single residential ADSL subscribers’ service. Hauling traffic in this manner is expensive and inefficient. The County needs better if it is to realistically provide competitive and capable technology services to its businesses and resident. It is from these facts, and out of this need that we are motivated to undertake the Broadband Project for Washington County.
To date Axiom has been primarily self-funded. While difficult, the company has been able to advance under its own resources and operate primarily out of revenue. However, this newest challenge exceeds the financial capabilities of this organization to address. Based on the weight of the issue, the public good to be served by its completion, and the common-sense benefits that will result for businesses and residents of the County we feel it is right and proper to ask our state and federal representatives for financial assistance at this time.
The actual work of the project will involve the creation of two complementary and redundant high-capacity links from Washington County to Bangor.
I. Wireless DS3 Transport
A high capacity wireless link can be implemented in a relatively short period time. The link will operate at DS3 capability, which is equivalent to 28 T1’s, or 45Mbit. This facility will offer a transmission channel for voice and data that is independent from the existing land-based circuit infrastructure.
The link itself will be a wireless bridge transmitted from a site in Bangor to a tower on Black Cap hill outside Bangor. From Black Cap the signal will be transmitted on to a master tower location in Washington County. From the master tower location the bandwidth can be forwarded on to Machias and other towns. Power backup systems will be included at the tower sites to protect against service outages and backup components will be kept on hand in the event of equipment failures. The system will be monitored by both human and automated systems around the clock.
The technologies involved are the same as that Axiom currently uses in its wide area wireless network. The principles are well understood and this application is a replication on a larger scale of systems that have been successfully deployed and are in operation currently.
II.Wireline DS3 Transport
In addition to the wireless DS3 facility, a traditional high-capacity landline circuit will be provisioned between Bangor and Machias. To facilitate this, a collocation facility (a cage to house equipment) will need to be constructed in Bangor and Machias within the Verizon central offices. Axiom has previously requested and been granted CLEC authority by the Public Utilities Commission. This status provides all the necessary rights for Axiom to occupy or “collocate” within the Verizon structures.
Construction of the collocation facilities is limited by Verizon. Normally this process takes 76 business days from the time the collocation application is approved. Once construction of those facilities is complete the provisioning of a DS3 circuit can begin.
In the Machias collocation electronics will be installed to balance and shift traffic between the landline and wireless DS3 links. These components will provide the failover function of moving traffic from one facility to another should a failure occur on either. This is an important aspect of the project as the network will ultimately carry a great deal of voice and business-class traffic.