WiMAX kicks up Internet powers

Graham Ellison's company is providing broadband Internet and data service to 20 businesses from Aiken to Thomson -- and he hasn't put a single foot of copper wire or fiber optic cable in the ground to do it.

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Graham Ellison, president of Advanced Technology Group, installs gear on a TV tower to transmit wireless Internet using microwave technology.

The only thing between his company's network and its customers is blue sky.

Since January, Mr. Ellison's Augusta-based Altanga Communications has been providing one of the most advanced wireless broadband currently available, WiMAX, a microwave-based signal transmission technology sometimes referred to as "Wi-Fi on steroids."

"We're taking a wire and replacing it with this," Mr. Ellison said, pointing to a cluster of small transmitters and receivers sitting on a table at his Broad Street office.

Though there are a handful of large companies offering similar point-to-point service in other markets -- such as Waltham, Mass.-based TowerStream Corp. and Ashburn, Va.-based DigitalBridge Communications -- the WiMAX industry is still in its infancy.

"There's some good business opportunities out there," said Philip Marshall, an analyst with Boston-based Yankee Group. "It's interesting and it's great to see these small and innovative companies out there."

Altanga is the only company in Augusta offering WiMAX broadband service. It markets the service under the name.

Unlike Wi-Fi, a technology primarily used by consumers, WiMAX is more secure, has longer range and greater bandwidth, making it more suitable for businesses needing a high-speed data connection.

WiMAX's bandwidth allows it to quickly transmit large amounts of data, such as X-ray files and high-resolution photos and graphics.

Here's how it works: Mr. Ellison's company takes the bandwidth it leases on high-speed underground lines and transmits it to its communications gear installed on area mobile phone and television towers -- the company leases the space from the tower owners.

The signal is then directed to their customers' antennas, providing a synchronous (equal upload and download speed) data connection ranging from less than 1 megabit per second to 300 megabits per second.

Altanga prices the service, which it calls FlexStream, based on a company's precise data needs, so customers pay only for the bandwidth they use.

However, Altanga officials say the main benefit of WiMAX is that it eliminates the time and cost of providing the "last mile" link between a customer and the underground data lines owned by companies such as AT&T and Level 3 Communications (which owns the KMC Telecom fiber optic ring around Augusta).

"It can take up to 60 days to get traditional broadband service, and it costs $60,000 a mile to lay fiber," said Chris Caldwell, Altanga's director of business development. "This technology is an equalizer."

Some customers use the technology as a backup to its landline-based broadband connection, which could be disrupted if the line was accidently cut.

"My network is not going to go down by somebody digging a hole," Mr. Ellison said. "I don't have to worry about a tree coming down and knocking lines off a pole."

Augusta-based marketing firm Ocozzio was an early adopter of Altanga's service.

"In a matter of two days their guys installed a radio in our building and we were getting 6 megs up and 6 megs down," Ocozzio CEO Russ Krueger said.

Altanga is currently the only company in the Augusta-Aiken region providing WiMAX service. WiMAX technology has been in use for years by the military but has been used for commercial applications only recently.

"I don't know that much about how it works, but it works very well," said Ann Chambers, office manager for Unicco, a facilities maintenance contractor at the Bridgestone/Firestone South Carolina tire plant near Aiken that switched from a satellite Internet provider to Altanga's WiMAX earlier this year.

The six-employee Unicco office in Aiken oversees 180 workers and is based inside the tire plant. The office needed a broadband connection to transmit payroll and other accounting data to its home office in Boston, but hooking into the plant's data lines was not an option and installing its own cabling would have been troublesome and costly.

It had to rely on a satellite service, which Ms. Chambers said was very slow and prone to service disruptions.

Just days after learning about Altanga's WiMAX service, she was receiving a 1.5 megabit synchronous Internet connection (equal to the bandwidth of a "T1" line) beamed from a TV tower in Beech Island to a small antenna mounted on the roof of the Bridgestone/Firestone plant.

"What used to take seven or eight hours to do now maybe takes three," she said.

Altanga's partnership with Columbia-based Spirit Telecom, which operates a fiber-optic data network throughout the Carolinas, will allow it to expand the service to markets such as Greenville and Charleston, possibly as early as next year.

The bandwidth of WiMAX is large enough to carry voice traffic and data. Next month, Mr. Ellison said his company will begin offering customers wireless access to the public telephone network.

He said the voice quality "is no different than running it on fiber or copper."

Reach Damon Cline at (706) 823-3486 or damon.cline@augustachronicle.com.