The Town of Westwood, MA

Current Status: Feasibility Study Completed, Project Closed.

In July 2002, Beth Ahern, IS Manager for the Town of Westwood, MA contacted us about their high-speed Internet conundrum.

Westwood is a quiet suburb south west of Boston. A neighborhood known for being close to the city but still away from the hussle and bustle, Westwood has a variety of residents, many of them with the same needs as the rest of us: high speed Internet.

Unfortunately, there was no high-speed Internet for the residents of Westwood. Verizon DSL stopped short of the town border and AT&T Broadband (at the time) had cable service, but no high-speed Internet.

Beth wanted us to see if WiFi could be used to provide "last-mile" services to the residents, through banwidth provided by T1s from city buildings in the town centers.

Tech Superpowers, Inc. - creators of NewburyOpen.net - was hired on a consultative basis to do an assessment of the feasibility of the providing WiFi as the "last mile" of access, through town-sponsored T1s distributed throughout the areas on public buildings (libraries, firehouses, etc). For 2002, it was a novel idea and one that had the support of the town selectmen, the municipal agencies, and the townspeople, although there was no major funding to be set aside for the effort until our study could be completed.

The low-budget feasibility study included a simple WiFi experiment - mounting a WiFi antenna high on the fire station's transmission tower and some "wardriving" - driving around with WiFi equipment to detect how strong the signal was at the various different locations in Westwood.

There were definitely a few confused residents, as our now-famous "WiFiCar" drove around looking for signal in the neighborhoods of Westwood, but those that were curious enough to ask found out that their town was trying to do something good for them that the big telcos and cable companies had been unable to. There were even dozens of volunteers that allowed us to climb on their roofs with antennas - and many offers of beer, food, and access to their facilities!

Unfortunately, the results were not very positive. "Last Mile" WiFi is very difficult, as we found out very early in the WiFi game (why do you think we're not in that business?). In a wooded, hilly area like some parts of Westwood, it requires a very high density of access points mounted on high towers to get consistent coverage (we're talking one every square mile or so). Sure, it would cost a lot less than building your own fibre network or cable infrastructure, but it would cause more clutter than cell phone antennas that operate at licensed frequencies and higher power.

Towns are just not set up for this type of infrastructure building, and worse yet, you could not guarantee 100% access to every house, which DSL and cable providers have to provide when they come into a town. That made the pricing structure difficult to establish, and it was hard to justify using taxpayer dollars to pay for access that not everyone could have.

The good news, however, was that Verizon and Comcast announced high-speed service at the end of the year, just weeks after the feasibility study was conducted. Just coincidence? We're not sure, but there was also a Boston Globe article pointing out the Westwood project at the same time. Hmmm.

The Westwood project was important in showing that providing residential services via WiFi, although theoretically feasible, wasn't a sure bet. But at the very least, it did show promise that it, or some future version of something like it (like the coming WiMax) could compete with the big guys.

Back to Our Projects