Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Wheat Takes Wi-Fi to the High Seas

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 10:45:25 -0400

Wheat Takes Wi-Fi to the High Seas

While most are focusing on the deployment of land-based Wi-Fi services, Forrest
Wheat will be offering the Wi-Fi service to mariners. Using 200-foot towers in
coastal areas, Wheat will provide TeleSea high-speed wireless broadband service 30
miles out to sea. Wheat also launched a more extensive service for tankers and
ocean liners that employs satellites to transmit the voice and data signals.
=====================================================================================

PluggedIn: Wi-Fi in the middle of the ocean
 Tue September 16, 2003 06:13 PM ET

By Eric Auchard

NEW YORK, Sept 16 (Reuters) - A seagoing vessel plying the deep blue ocean waves
might be the last place on the planet one would expect to find high-speed
Internet.

But marine communications company Wheat International of Herndon, Virginia, is
striving to deliver ship-to-shore Internet access to a market covering four-fifths
of the surface of the globe, and one largely ignored by established network
carriers.
Entrepreneur Forrest Wheat, the company's owner, aims to put the leisurely
yachter, cruise ship passenger and sailors from merchant ships and fishing fleets
on the Internet grid.

His year-old service, TeleSea, has tossed a line to U.S. coastal waterways, and
eventually aims to encircle the globe.
"This service takes you places where Wi-Fi really hasn't gone before," said
Brownlee Thomas, a telecommunications analyst with market forecaster Forrester
Research, based in Montreal.

The vision -- impossible to achieve on land, where buildings and trees hamper
Wi-Fi connections even 100 yards away -- is to deliver Internet links up to 30
miles offshore. This week, Wheat added satellite hook-ups for ocean liners.

Wheat, the self-titled company founded by the former MCI and Navy engineer, is
rolling out an ambitious strategy to provide wireless hook-ups at short range in
marinas, at longer distances off-shore and even in the middle of the ocean.

While short-range wireless computer connections are all the buzz as they pop up in
a growing number of cafes, hotels, offices and airports, sea-going communications
remain largely dependent on limited-range ship-to-shore radios or expensive marine
satellite communications systems from British satellite company Inmarsat or Sea
Tel, the marine communications systems manufacturer.

"TeleSea is more economic than your alternatives. And you can get the high-speed
bandwidth," Thomas said.
Wheat does not sell the equipment but leases it as a service, gear included, in
exchange for a yearly service contract. The service is by no means cheap, unless
you plan to use the system for several years and amortize the cost over time.
Coastal Wi-Fi service reaching 30 miles offshore costs $500 a month. This service
requires an upfront installation charge of $7,500, which includes one year's
service fees. It is not meant for skiffs, but serious recreational or commercial
boaters.
On land, the company has set up a network of radio antennas more than 200 feet
high.  These towers allow Wi-Fi signals to travel unobstructed for 30 miles or
more, until the curvature of the Earth intervenes.

Wheat's coastal networks now operate off both U.S. coasts -- Cape Cod in New
England;
Long Island, New York; Chesapeake Bay and Florida, and Southern California, San
Francisco, Puget Sound and Seattle, Washington, and Honolulu.

TeleSea offers unlimited Internet access for a flat, monthly fee at speeds up to
11 megabits a second, or 200 times faster than the Internet via basic dial-up
phone connections.

TeleSea's near-shore Wi-Fi system relies on industry standard Wi-Fi equipment
onboard the receiving end. The box weighs about 30 pounds and has a four-foot
directional antenna that is fine-tuned to lower the atmospheric noise, which
distorts radio signals, and extend Wi-Fi for miles.

Wheat is contracting with satellite service provider SES Americom SESF.LU to
deliver deep-sea services from 22,500 miles above the Earth. The first satellite
covers territory from the Caribbean to Hawaii in the Pacific. Additional
satellites to be launched by SES will extend the reach of Wheat's services farther
into the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific, the Mediterranean Sea and other bodies of
water.

Satellite signals are capable of offering Internet-based voice calling or video
delivery services.
These signals can be subdivided on ocean-going vessels to allow crew to share
access to available bandwidth, much like office workers share capacity on a
department computer network.

The satellite service, designed for deep-water ships, carries even heftier
up-front installation costs of $50,000. Monthly charges are $999 and up, varying
according to data rates.

Wheat is wading into a market dominated by companies that use heavy fixed antennas
and satellite dishes, systems that are cheaper to install but carry higher monthly
charges. They are viable for large commercial craft but few pleasure boaters.
Sea Tel's Wave Call system offers monthly per-minute billing plans around North
America in increments from $35 to $500, with additional fees for each minute over
the allotted time. But downloading gigabytes of data quickly runs bills up into
the thousands of dollars.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3456030
=======================================================================================

Broadband for Yachts, Cannery Ships, and
Coalition Warfare
By Alex Goldman

In North America, wherever you are, you've probably got a
broadband option of some kind, whether it's satellite, Wi-Fi, or
wireline. But Wheat Wireless has found one niche that no other
company is competing for: Broadband at sea.

Wheat Wireless is part of Wheat International, named after the
husband and wife team who founded the company, CEO Forrest C.
Wheat, and senior and executive vice president Linda M. Wheat. Her
professional background is at MCI, while his is at Research and Data
Systems (RDS), a telecommunications firm specializing in government contracts.
Mr. Wheat served in the U.S. Navy until 1983, and says his tour of duty included
five
years of combat service in Vietnam.

Wheat International is a subcontractor for such customers as AT&T and, through
EDS, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.
We spoke to Mr. Wheat about Wheat Wireless' TeleSea broadband Internet service. He
said that Wheat Wireless has always been innovating. "We put a wireless system on
a Chevy van in 1998, and we've been involved in things like CAT scans in the
field," he said.

The TeleSea project incorporates three different services at three different
prices. For Internet access anywhere in the world, the company offers TeleSea
Blue. (Actually, there are still some parts of the world not visible to any
satellite. Wheat notes, "there are still parts of the country not covered by
satellite, and there are also parts of the ocean not covered by satellite.) For
the moment, Blue service covers the coast of the U.S., the Caribbean, and the
Pacific "out to Hawaii." The company expects to add Europe and South America soon,
and then most of the rest of the world.

TeleSea Blue offers two speeds, 512 Kbps down/ 128 Kbps up or 1 Mbps down / 192
Kbps up. For either service, the installation fee is $50,000. The monthly fee is
$1,495 for the faster service, $1,195 for the slower service, plus a monthly
equipment lease of $149 after the first year. Wheat Wireless leases equipment to
boat owners; it does not sell the equipment. More expensive options (pricing not
disclosed) offer speeds up to 40 Mbps down. Boats with large numbers of
simultaneous users, such as casino cruise ships in the Gulf of Mexico, seem likely
clients.

TeleSea Gold is a local service that uses radio towers instead of satellite
technology. The radio towers provide broadband out to 30 miles at specific
locations. Wheat notes that a flotilla of ships, such as a fishing expedition, can
install Blue on the mother ship (a cannery ship) while other smaller (fishing)
vessels use Gold to connect to satellite broadband through the mother ship. Fees
are $7,500 installation plus $500 per month, with an equipment lease of $65 per
month after the first year.
TeleSea Marina is the cheapest option. It uses no external antenna, and is priced
accordingly, at $19.95 per day, $99.95 per week, or $159.95 per month. The company
also charges a refundable $350 equipment deposit.
Installation fees are high because installation can be complex. "If you're talking
about a 540 foot steel hull boat," explained Wheat, "we have to do work outside
and then bring the Internet inside on Ethernet." Installation has to be
weatherproof and fault-redundant, including battery backup.

It took a large network, agreements with other satellite providers, and even some
in-house R&D to get the project off the ground. "We have our own antenna system,
and we have our own cards for the Marina service," explained Wheat. "We're much
more than just a Wi-Fi radio. We have a secure and authenticated network with data
centers in Miami and California.  Authentication happens in San Diego."
The company establishes relationships with major marinas, and that, in turn, gives
Wheat Wireless customers the ability to roam. "Someone might want to use it at one
yacht club in Maryland part of the year and then another in Florida for the rest
of the year," explained Wheat.
Phone calls over the company's network can be routed through any of the various
satellite providers. Wheat said prices vary widely from as low as $1.25 per minute
on Iridium to as much as $75 per minute on Inmarsat. "We have our own switching
team," Wheat added.
The company claims a large variety of customers. Wheat said, "We've got cruise
ships, tow boats towing cargo in the Caribbean and Hawaiian islands, private
yachts (80 foot or larger), way stations, and the navies of the world. Today, with
coalition warfare, any number of countries may send smaller vessels. In the old
days, each country had a different type of system.  All of a sudden, with the
Internet, we can provide intranets so coalition forces can work together."
But it's all about getting the basics right. "We test the equipment," says Wheat.
"Boats can have UHF, radar, satellite, even microwaves. We test them all operating
simultaneously. That's what separates the wheat from the chaff, so to speak."
Reprinted from ISP-Planet.

http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/columns/article.php/3077911

September 16, 2003

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