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Science/Tech
See other Science/Tech ArticlesTitle: A High-Tech Hot Spot in Oregon's High Desert
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Post Date: 2005-11-27 14:46:40 by robin
Keywords: High-Tech, Oregons, Desert
Views: 5
A High-Tech Hot Spot in Oregon's High Desert
Wi-Fi access, set up for nerve gas depot emergencies, is free for all
By Sam Howe Verhovek
Times Staff Writer
November 27, 2005
HERMISTON, Ore. — Barreling down U.S. Highway 395, through remote
farmland not far from a massive storage facility for old chemical
weapons, Fred Ziari beckoned his passenger to jump on the Internet.
"OK, go ahead," Ziari, an Iranian-born wireless communications
entrepreneur, said with a touch of glee. "Launch your browser. It's
free!"
Fast, free broadband wireless access to the Internet
might seem an unlikely amenity for this part of the country. But in a
roughly 700-square-mile area stretching across five counties in eastern
Oregon and Washington state, unimpeded wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi,
access is being given a unique trial run by individuals, police
departments, shippers and even onion brokers.
The reason this
wireless hot spot — believed to the largest in the nation — was set up
in the first place was not for those potential users, however. It was
built as an emergency communications system in the event of a leak at
the Umatilla Chemical Depot, where nearly 4,000 tons of sarin, mustard
and other Cold War-era nerve gases are stored in concrete igloos.
The wireless network, which cost about $5 million to set up, is almost
entirely paid for from federal, state and local emergency-preparedness
funds. Ziari runs the private company that built and maintains the
system, EZ Wireless.
In a disaster, officials here say, the
wireless network will provide vital communications across the area
about evacuation plans and the wind direction.
Despite that
sobering reality, residents seem to be looking at the brighter side of
the network's usefulness, including its potential to attract business
to the area.
In cities and suburbs across the nation,
proposals for free or reduced-cost Wi-Fi access to the Internet pit a
self-styled populist movement against cable and telephone industries
that have spent billions laying connections to homes and businesses.
While "Wi-Fi for all" proponents liken the amenity to municipal water
or interstate highways, critics say it's an unfair public subsidy in
what should be a private marketplace.
All those arguments
seem beside the point in the Hermiston area, where many houses and
farms are so far out in the country that they have neither cable nor
high-speed DSL lines. Thus, the wireless network faced little protest
when it was started up two years ago.
Ziari's system uses
dozens of antennas to pick up and broadcast a signal. Technically a
combination of short-range signals known as Wi-Fi and longer-range ones
known as WiMax, the combined effect creates a wireless "cloud" allowing
access from almost anywhere in the Hermiston area.
"It has
opened our eyes to all kinds of possibilities," said Kim Puzey, general
manager of the Port of Umatilla, which is near the convergence of the
Columbia and Snake rivers and is one of the largest grain ports in the
country. "We're no longer confined by wires."
Port workers, farmers and shippers, who are spread across a vast area, already communicate about shipments via the network.
The port also plans to set up a network of cameras at key shipping and
storage points that will be accessed via the Internet and, officials
say, will provide a vastly improved security system.
Longer
range, Puzey said, the port envisions an electronic tag system that
will not only verify for shippers where their goods are, but also let
them see the goods.
"It's sort of a step beyond even where FedEx and UPS are now with their tracking systems," Puzey said.
It's a potential competitive advantage — Oregon's wheat farmers, for
instance, sell their grain around the world, so an Internet tracking
system could allow them to show the product directly to a potential
buyer in Pakistan or Thailand.
Bob Hale, one of the Subway
sandwich chain's biggest suppliers of red onions, already can do that
with a digital camera. He often takes photographs when he's out in the
fields and sends them via his laptop to potential buyers. Then he calls
them on his cellphone.
"I'll say, 'You see that onion I'm
showing you? I'm going to harvest it tomorrow and send it to you,' "
Hale said. "Customers love that."
Hale, the president of
Hermiston-based American Onion, uses the wireless network for
everything from checking sports scores to monitoring aerial photos of
his 40,000-acre farm. That allows him to see potential trouble spots
right away — for instance, an area where a sprinkler is plugged with
dirt and not properly irrigating his plants.
"Vegetables are
very temperamental," Hale said. "Timing is everything in the vegetable
business. They're like kids, actually. When they need something,
especially water, they need it right now."
Another enthusiastic user of the network is Dan Coulombe, the chief of Hermiston's 23-officer Police Department.
"Our officers now can get and send information directly over the Internet," said Coulombe.
"They don't have to come in to write up every single report," including
traffic infractions in which a suspect is not brought in for booking.
"They file their reports directly off a laptop in the squad car. That's
saving us 2,000 hours of time annually right there."
Coulombe
also said he envisioned a time when officers everywhere could tap into
Internet-based criminal records rather than calling in for information
from a harried dispatcher.
People here readily acknowledge
that the wireless system would probably not have been affordable were
it not for the Army's chemical depot, a giant fenced-off complex
several miles outside Hermiston.
Local schools conduct
regular lockdown drills in preparation for a deadly leak — all windows
and doors are sealed shut and the air is filtered.
On
Hermiston's main street, a rather jarring exhibit of chemical-weapons
history and safety suits is on display at the federally funded Umatilla
Chemical Agent Disposal Facility outreach office.
There has
never been a severe spill or leak of the nerve gas, much of which is
being destroyed under provisions of international treaties that ban
their use. And so residents tend to look at the upside of their free
wireless network, which in some respects puts the area further into the
techno-future than many urban areas.
Ziari, 52, whose pockets
are bulging with gadgets — cellphones, hand-held organizers, a global
positioning device and several credit card-sized wireless modems —
trained as an agricultural engineer at Texas A&M. He is energized
by the potential of wireless technology.
"We are bridging the
digital divide here," he said as he zoomed around the back roads of
eastern Oregon, his passenger sending e-mail from a laptop. "I really
believe this technology is going to revolutionize the world."
Ziari sees a time when the cost of wireless technology falls so low
that it can be used across the Third World, leapfrogging over the
conventional need for telephone or cable lines.
One often hears
how hard and expensive it is to "go the last mile," a phrase used by
cable and telephone companies for stretching their lines to users in
homes and offices.
"Well, we're going the last mile," said
Ziari, speeding away from downtown Hermiston and into the lonesome high
desert, "and then we're going several miles after that."
Poster Comment:
And all my ancestors/relations enjoyed in eastern Oregon was deer and elk hunting.
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