Let me state that Connected Nation does a great job of working to map fixed wireless operators in the states they have contracts from what I have seen. The work I am doing in Illinois is a handoff of the work Connected Nation did prior to their contract expiring. I will state that their work was done well and certainly a far cry from some of the other states that do not contract with them. As Chip mentions, many states do not have the staff or experience to deal with wireless very well. I was not singling out Connected Nation.
My methodology is not meant to slight the work of connected nation, my methodology is meant to reduce the amount of work required for a WISP to have to do to participate in the national broadband map. While the data some states like to collect is very detailed and does allow for the ability to do very advanced studies with tools like EDX Signal Pro, the amount of additional detail gained in coverage areas over my methodology has not been enough that I feel the need to alienate WISP's based on a very intimidating request for information. Most WISP's have also felt that the amount of work they would have to do to compile that level of detail in data should be done by the companies who received money to conduct the work in the first place. While this is not always practical because the data still resides with the WISP, I do not feel there needs to be as much minutia gathered which takes a huge amount of time away from WISP operations that generate revenue. The Illinois process also provides for direct feedback with the WISP's by sending them a detailed fully interactive final version of their network coverage map of which they can spot check and validate the propagation results as well as make any annotations in the geographically proper place. We also do other validation through data sets obtained outside of the carrier supplied information. These are in the form of speed tests, user surveys, and other crowd sourced data. While it would be nice to do a lot more field verification, there are too many factors to do a practical drive test or spectrum analysis of a WISP network. Between the proprietary protocols, nature of high gain fixed wireless CPE and their mounting heights, provisioning to gain access to the network, other network settings such as bandwidth management and cloaking, there are just too many factors that come in to play for an effective and valid drive test effort. Drive testing and spectrum analysis does work well for the likes of the cellular companies and Clearwire. For small WISP's the challenges are too much. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Spann, Chip Sent: Thursday, August 04, 2011 2:18 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [WISPA] Providing data to NTIA for Broadband mapping? Connected Nation employs actual wireless engineers, most of whom have 25+ years of experience in EBS, BRS, WCS, AWS, LMDS, PCS and unlicensed wireless bands. Most of us have also been WISPs ourselves and, to that end, we understand your business quite well. Radio Mobile is one of the propagation modeling tools we use but we also have 5 licensed copies of EDX Signal and Signal Pro. We have tested and used MapInfo, CelPlan, Splat and more than a dozen other wireless propagation modeling tools. Mr. Webster states that his methodology is easy to use and understand. Some states have neither methodology nor staff for addressing fixed wireless. Perhaps our methodology is more complex yet, at the end of the day, state mapping agents are required to effectively deliver the same product to NTIA. I head up the fixed wireless and mobile wireless user group at NTIA and have a published white paper explaining our rather long, but exceptionally detailed, methodology and would be happy to share it with this group upon request. Finally, some mapping agents (like our company) go beyond simply creating a theoretical propagation model - we do conduct static field tests and compile data at hundreds of points during drive tests. Last year we drove over 100,000 miles last year, spectrum analyzer and CPE in hand, conducting tests and using the data to refine our propagation models. However, nothing is as important than the relationship between the mapping agent and the WISP. In the states where we are engaged, we spend a great deal of time talking to and working with the WISPs so that we have a keen understanding of their system BEFORE we create propagation models. Charles "Chip" Spann Director - Engineering & Technical Services Connected Nation (270) 799-0448 [email protected]
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