Do-it-yourself wireless backbone takes shape on Cape Cod

A nonprofit group of wireless pilgrims is venturing into virgin territory to create a regional wireless backhaul net to bring broadband capacity to Cape Cod, Mass., where the original Pilgrims first set foot nearly 400 years earlier.

Just a year after its formation with $300,000 from a group of Cape Cod colleges, communities and development agencies, the nonprofit OpenCape Corp. is installing the first group of Motorola point-to-point radios, which will eventually form a wireless backbone along the spine of high ground that reaches along the entire arm-shaped Cape, as well as the nearby islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

At the very tip of the Cape is Provincetown, the site of the first landfall of the Pilgrims, on Nov. 21, 1620. A few weeks later, they sailed across Massachusetts Bay to land at Plymouth, a more sheltered site for the first permanent settlement.

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A nonprofit group of wireless pilgrims is venturing into virgin territory to create a regional wireless backhaul net to bring broadband capacity to Cape Cod, Mass., where the original Pilgrims first set foot nearly 400 years earlier.

Just a year after its formation with $300,000 from a group of Cape Cod colleges, communities and development agencies, the nonprofit OpenCape Corp. is installing the first group of Motorola point-to-point radios, which will eventually form a wireless backbone along the spine of high ground that reaches along the entire arm-shaped Cape, as well as the nearby islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

At the very tip of the Cape is Provincetown, the site of the first landfall of the Pilgrims, on Nov. 21, 1620. A few weeks later, they sailed across Massachusetts Bay to land at Plymouth, a more sheltered site for the first permanent settlement.

The first stage of the project is a pilot network targeted at 100+Mbps, from Cape Cod Community College, through radios mounted on a couple of water towers as well as a university, the famed Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, and a municipal electric utility on the mainland. The first link being built is the most technically demanding one: a 20-mile “shot” over water. These initial links will be used to test performance and reliability.

The network design, equipment recommendations and installation have been handled by Direct Network Services, a wireless network integrator based in Littleton, Mass., which has worked closely with OpenCape on the backbone project from its start.

OpenCape’s preliminary models indicate that the net will sustain 250Mbps with 99.999% reliability, says Dan Gallagher, chairman of the nonprofit. Gallagher outlined the project at this week’s MuniWireless07 New England, a conference to promote municipal and regional broadband wireless networks.

OpenCape chose the Motorola PTP 600 Series point-to-point wireless Ethernet bridges, in both the 5.4 and 5.8GHz unlicensed bands. Gallagher says the net will consider embracing licensed spectrum to make the wireless links more secure in the future, relying in part on spectrum donated by colleges and universities in the area.

Motorola says the 600 Series radios deliver 300Mbps, but OpenCape calculates that a variety of factors will reduced the actual throughput.

But it will still be more than enough to justify a high-tech reprise of the original Thanksgiving Day for Cape Cod businesses and residents. Gallagher’s day job is executive director, information technology at Cape Cod Community College, in West Barnstable. When he took over that job 18 months ago, his first priority was to boost the school’s bandwidth capacity, which consisted of three leased T-1 lines.

But he quickly found there were few options for expanding bandwidth anywhere on Cape Cod, which has a small year-round population that soars each summer with swarms of vacationers. Carriers don’t see the population density that makes it worthwhile to install broadband, Gallagher says. The retired Navy officer calls the Cape the “North Korea of broadband” -- impoverished compared with neighbors Providence, R.I. and Boston.