WiSpring Brings Internet to Hill Towns
GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — For the last five years, a little-known company has been working hard to get service to outlying Berkshire County and New York state towns, places where Verizon and Comcast have yet to tread.It's no secret that many Berkshire County hilltowns have been surviving without reliable Internet services for years. Despite many run-ins with Verizon and a promise from Gov. Deval Patrick that all of Massachusetts will be plugged in to high-speed access, "last mile" residents need service now.
WiSpring may be the answer to their problems, at least for the time being. According to WiSpring founder and Sheffield native Crispin Tresp, towns have been "lighting up," thanks to demand and several small towers.
"When we first started the company my business partner at the time lived in Monterey and had no Internet service," Tresp said in a phone interview. "We'd been to all of the meetings and it was clear that Verizon wasn't going to do any expansion then. Since then we've been able to provide wireless service to nearly 80 percent of Alford, a good portion of Egremont and Great Barrington and now Mount Washington. When we said that we'd go in we had landowners approaching us saying they owned part of a hillside and that we could put a tower there. That's how bad people need these connections."
Make no mistake, Tresp said, a WiSpring tower is not a cell-phone tower nor does it resemble a "Frankenpine."
"The equipment is extremely small and low-powered, and you can't really see it most times," he said. "That's why our model works so well in this area."
WiSpring has set up four towers in Berkshire County and eight in New York (in conjunction with NY Air). These towers send signals to house antennae, which are hardwired to the interior systems using cables. According to Jim Lovejoy, a Mount Washington selectman and one of the founders of the Southern Berkshire Technology Committee, while WiSpring's services is sufficient for most hilltowns right now, inevitable problems will arise because of terrain and politics.
"Everybody is desperate for high-speed Internet," he said. "And that last mile is basically where everybody lives. Unless local communities get together and start stringing their own fiber-optic wires, how are you going to connect to subscribers? WiSpring is great for a stopgap right now. It's way better than satellite but long term, it may not be able to provide the kind of service that people need. I definitely appreciate what they are trying to do in Mount Washington, but lot of it is tied to the terrain. There's not a great line of sight in a lot of these towns and WiSpring is working with some technology that has limitations."
Whether landscape or technology is the culprit, Tresp said WiSpring is excited to move forward and plans on adding two more towers – one in Tyringham and one at an existing fire tower on Lenox Mountain – in the near future. Additionally, WiSpring is hoping to be able to add WiMax, which can provide broadband wireless service for up to 30 miles, to its growing list of services.
"We're not a startup company but we are a small company and we're competing with major satellite companies," Tresp said. "When we first started I knew almost every name on our client list; now that list is in the thousands and all of the advertising we've done is through word of mouth. What we're hearing is clear. People need Internet. They need it if they are going to buy a house in the area, they need it if they are going back and forth from the city, traders need it, small businesses need it, everybody."
While WiSpring continues to perfect its technology and build a local client base, Lovejoy said it's going to take more than a few little towers to get high-speed Internet to rural towns.
"If it were profitable Verizon would be stringing lines in towns right now," he said. "The solution to this is going to be a nonprofit one just like road and infrastructure. In the 21st century, the mode of transportation is high-speed Internet. Verizon and Comcast are trying to keep this from happening. We need to put political pressure on the powers that be because we know how important this is for everyone."
