In a June 26 press release, Gig.U., a consortium of 37 major universities committed to accelerating broadband connectivity and services announced a new initiative that will provide Super WiFi to small and rural colleges and universities.
In partnership with Google and Microsoft, approximately 500 colleges and university represented by higher education organizations such as the United Negro College Fund, Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE), and the National Institute of Technology in Liberal Education, the group will create AIR.U (Advanced Internet Regions) to deploy unlicensed Super Wi-Fi, upgrading broadband to underserved college campuses.
AIR.U will use “white spaces” between the unoccupied television channels, formerly home to the nation’s analog TV signals. The technology is known throughout the industry as super WiFi or White-Fi. The Wi-FI signals will be available to the university and the neighboring community, expanding coverage and connectivity on and off campus.
The partnership also includes The Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation, Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) and Declaration Network Group, a new entity that was established to plan and deploy the Super Wi-Fi technologies.
Plans call for establishing pilot network installations in several university communities, creating a master plan for rapid deployment and network sustainability as white-space equipment becomes more widely available in the next year. According to the press release, small rural communities have been selected due to “below average broadband availability.” The mission is to provide for the educational needs of the communities and increase connectivity to higher-quality broadband.
“Expanded broadband access has been an unaffordable hurdle in rural, underserved communities. The opportunity to acquire and leverage spectrum and broadband assets will go far in addressing the competitive disadvantage their absence created,” said Robert Rucker, vice president for operations and technology at the United Negro College Fund.
One advantage in selecting super WiFi for the initiative is that it is transmitted at much lower frequencies than conventional Wi-Fi installations allowing the signals to penetrate deeper into buildings and cover larger service areas. Installations are described as a series of base stations tied to a backhaul network which will likely be DSL or microwave.
The AIR.U initiative was developed based on data mined from requests for information sent to small colleges and universities.
