Fond du Lac County Takes Wireless Internet to the Max

SOURCE: WBAY-TV - By Chris Hrapsky
You may have heard of Wi-Fi, or wireless Internet, but how about WiMax? Fond du Lac County is using it to become the first to create county-wide wireless Internet access.

James Brown is tired of slow Internet access. "I was on a dial-up and it was very poor, the wiring out here."

Brown said he's never had access to high-speed, or broadband, Internet because no company offers cable in his part of the county. But that's about to change.

Certain cities like Green Bay offer wireless Internet in some areas, but soon, from the middle of a farm field to a city sidewalk, you'll be able to get wireless Internet access anywhere in Fond du Lac County. It's the first county in the state to do it.

It's called WiMax, and from a tower it can provide through-the-air Internet for up to 30 miles.

"This is state-of-the-art technology that exists, it's just a matter of will: Are we going to do it, and are we going to do it now?" Dotnet president Frank Cumberbatch said.

The county partnered with Dotnet, a local wireless company. The county offered use of its six radio towers, and in exchange it will use Dotnet's infrastructure for communication among departments and for the Internet.

The exchange is worth about $43,000 a year, but it also saves the county the expense of buying new equipment that Dotnet is already providing.

"The cost of the infrastructure is a lot of money. It's a lot of money," county administration director Ellen Sorenson said. "It could be up to, if we wanted to do a whole build-up for the entire county, a million dollars."

County officials are happy to trade, and rural residents like James are finally ready to surf with speed.

NOTE: The new company, Granite Broadband, will be headquartered in downtown Ripon.