If you live in Greensboro, having access to wireless broadband internet is a no-brainer. YouTube, Facebook, online classes – no problem. But what if you live in the mountains or in other rural areas of the state?
Dr. Rick Bunch, director of the Department of Geography’s Center for Geographic Information Science, knows exactly what that means. Bunch and his team, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), mathematical models and field research, spent all of 2010 mapping the state’s existing wireless cloud, documenting its reach into rural areas and noting the corners of the state without broadband access of any kind.
The entire nation is still trying to map the wire lines. I don’t know of any other state that has done the wireless mapping.
The resulting wireless propagation model, laid out at e-NC Authority’s web site, shows significant coverage in the city’s population centers as expected, and reveals swaths of isolation in the western mountains and the northwest and northeast corners of the state, as well as smaller pockets in the more thinly populated areas.
“The problem is that building and extending network capacity is costly, and the limited number of potential subscribers in rural areas makes it difficult to justify this expense,” Bunch says. For many rural areas in North Carolina, a wireless signal is the only way to achieve broadband access.
A broadband wireless signal originates from a physical backbone created by cable, fiber-optics or a DSL signal that travels through telephone lines. Relay towers at the end of the line transmit the broadband signal as radio waves, which are subject to all manner of physical interference, both natural and man-made.
And it’s important enough that the federal government allocated a portion of the 2009 American Recovery and Re-Investment Act to expand broadband internet access to rural areas.
“The region that lacks [broadband internet] access is at an economic disadvantage,” he says. Modern businesses can no more function without speedy internet access than without a supply line, and big companies looking to relocate or expand will not consider regions that do not have it.
Living apart from the broadband signal also stunts access to long-distance learning, Bunch says, affecting schools and online degree seekers. It prevents healthcare treatment via teleconferencing, an increasingly common practice. And forget about streaming Netflix.
Bunch’s study helps provide an initial approach for assessing equitable wireless broadband. But the wireless cloud, he says, is like an organism: expanding, shrinking and shifting as more relay towers are erected and more interference created through construction and population density changes. Even the seasons, he says, affect the signal.
“It changes every day,” he says.
So the work now is about updating the existing database as wireless access creeps into the far corners of the state. Bunch says there have been no significant changes to the map … yet. But additional funding from e-NC Authority, made available this year, will ensure that Bunch keeps the map current, and that North Carolina remains at the fore of this rapidly expanding technology.
“The entire nation is still trying to map the wire lines,” he says. “I don’t know of any other state that has done the wireless mapping.”
By David Wilson, University Relations
