White Spaces and Rural College Towns: the Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship

[Commentary] Several years ago we joined forces -- Michael as an advocate for allocating White Spaces for unlicensed use, Blair from the direction of providing the high bandwidth networks rural college towns need and often don’t have -- to create AIR.U, a project dedicated to using White Spaces to accelerate the deployment of next generation broadband networks in rural areas.

AIR.U is a collaboration with the Declaration Networks Group and various Higher Education Groups, including the United Negro College Fund, the New England Board of Higher Education, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education, and Gig.U, as well as Google, Microsoft and the Appalachian Regional Commission. We've made progress in addressing the chicken and egg issue, including the first AIR.U network deployment on the West Virginia University (WVU) campus, providing wireless access to the Internet at WVU's Personal Rapid Transit platforms.

Now it's time for another step forward. Last month, Declaration Networks Group announced a "Quick Start" Network Program tailored for Higher Education communities to evaluate, design, and deploy high capacity broadband networks leveraging White Spaces. The program includes an assessment of expansion approaches and a sustainable path to increase the coverage and capacity of high-speed wireless connectivity to the community. The program is offered exclusively to the AIR.U institutions. It includes a network with a base configuration supporting multiple Wi-Fi hotspots, and a user group for AIR.U Quick Start participants to collaborate in developing White Space technology, establish best practices, and share approaches for community expansion activities. We believe this partnership between rural college communities and white spaces networks is the beginning of beautiful friendship, catalyzing more extensive deployments, and accelerating economic and educational development throughout the United States.