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Muni Network Growth: One City's Solution

The City of Adel, Ga. Formed a Partnership With Camvera Networks To Address Network Expansion Issues
By Elizabeth Zucco

http://www.shorecliffcommunications.com/magazine/volume.asp?Vol=55&story=533

One of the oldest municipal broadband systems in the United States can be found in Adel, Ga. The system was constructed two years ago to serve the population of Adel and the surrounding community. Adel is the county seat for Cook County and is just north of Valdosta, Ga. and about 30 miles from the Florida state line on I-75.

Adel is sandwiched between two fairly good-sized Georgia cities — Tifton to the north and Valdosta to the south. However, it really was in the middle of nowhere in terms of the availability of high-speed access service.

The city is connected to the Georgia Public Web SONET ring, with an OC-38 point of presence located in the city's electric utilities facility. The problem was getting the network to the edge and providing affordable access beyond the footprint of the local telco and cable company.

Adel's community leadership was on the ball. They decided to take some risks and became an early adopter using fixed wireless broadband (aka "pre-WiMAX"). The gamble has paid off many-fold. Residential and business subscribers in the Adel vicinity can now get high-speed wireless Internet access service from SouthLINK.us, operated by the city with support from their partner, Camvera Networks.
Growing Pains
Adel had exceeded the capacity of their core wireless network and decided to extend the system to bring broadband farther out from the city limits.

"We just had more demand than the system could handle," said Tina Gandy, Adel's network administrator. "We realized that if we did not grow the system, we would start to lose customers."

So, the city of Adel doubled their capacity within their existing footprint. And they didn't stop there. Adel's system upgrade would be designed to serve other townships within the county, as well as key residential developments.

Adel used the Navini RipWave system for their core customer base. It seemed a bit robust for their targeted smaller communities. The city enlisted the support of Camvera Networks, which recommended using other radios to meet the needs of those communities.

This decision posed two technical issues. First, there would be a task of ensuring that radios from different manufacturers would work together optimally and tie in to the same operations support system (OSS). Second, there were logistical issues in extending the network. The city had one installer (who also worked on Utility Department needs), plus one person to handle network administration, sales and marketing. The ability of the city to add subscribers as far away as 15 miles could not happen without rethinking the operations plan.

It's important to note that unlike service provision in tier 1 and 2 markets, citizens in the tier 3 and 4 markets are not likely to sign up on-line or provide financial information over the Internet for recurring billing. Adel officials would have to take that into account.
Multiple Radios, One OSS
Adel, like many municipalities, chose to combine broadband service billing with utility billing. A costly pre-packaged billing solution was not what they needed.

The city had a provisioning system in place that was dated from the time when its original system was deployed. It was "homegrown," and had all the personality of a simple, quickly designed database. This provisioning system was not integrated with the Navini radio's Element Management System (EMS), and therefore functioned more as a way to keep up with manual processes rather than to automate them.

With this state of affairs, Camvera Networks worked to solve the city's problem. Camvera and a software development partner, Super Light Industry, had built an automated provisioning module to manage the Navini RipWave EMS system. Using XML/RPC, the middleware application programming interface (API) tied the Navini EMS to the Rodopi Billing and Operating Support System.

Camvera and Super Light Industry set out to extend the application so it could be used to provision modems for customers through one consolidated interface. The system had to work with modems from different equipment vendors, such as WaveRider, Motorola and Navini.

"We knew we could do this if we added RADIUS to the network," said Walt Henley Camvera's chief technology officer. "Both WaveRider and Motorola use RADIUS for modem management and authentication, while Navini uses a proprietary Element Management System.

"We also plan to use this same proprietary radio Element Management System interface with our customers running billing solutions," Henley said. "This will give us the ability to deploy a multi-radio, multi-functioning solution for any size market while staying extremely cost-efficient on a per subscriber basis."
Keeping It Simple
The architecture for Adel's OSS was designed to be extensible but not so rich as to make it difficult to use.

"The architecture is deliberately uncomplicated," stated Adam Bregenzer, president at Super Light Industry. "It is composed of a Web-based core with 'hooks' into each provisioning system. With a modular design, we are able to add new systems and features easily across the network while maintaining security. While the core runs on Linux, each extension is able to run natively in its own environment."

Camvera has plans to deploy the newly tailored solution in four upcoming deployments in Georgia, Alabama and Kentucky.

"We can now truly offer integrated billing, CPE [customer premises equipment] provisioning and authentication using different radio technologies scaled to meet the customer's needs. This is the next best thing in our markets to full-blown WiMAX interoperability," Henley stated.

About the Author: Elizabeth Zucco is a marketing consultant specializing in USDA/RUS and municipal broadband programs. She formerly served as marketing director at Camvera Networks, which operates wireless broadband systems for U.S. municipalities and private companies. She resides in Atlanta and can be reached at [e-mail].

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