Fixed Wireless Technology

A Wi-Fi VoIP Handoff in the Parking Lot

As a WISP CEO whizzed around a corporate parking lot, he got some weird looks, but he was doing his job, testing the limits of the wireless internet.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [March 22, 2005]

They're not the only urban WISP in existence, but odds are, if you ask people about urban Wi-Fi deployments, those on the East Coast of the U.S. will think first of Middletown, R.I.-based TowerStream, a company whose first urban market was Boston.

The company's founder, president, and COO, Jeff Thompson, is as adept at handling the press as he is at building a technology company. As this New York Times page shows, he's not above a little self-promotion.

But maybe other WISP CEOs could learn from Thompson. When he does something interesting, he lets everyone know about it. Which brings us to that parking lot.

TowerStream was testing equipment that would enable a VoIP call handoff from one base station to another. That's why he was driving around in the parking lot.

The technology is not brand new. It's been around for at least a year. Cisco calls its product architecture the Cisco Structured Wireless-Aware Network (Cisco SWAN), but it's not the only manufacturer working on wireless handoffs.

As we understand it, whichever manufacturer you use, a central database keeps track of each device and session and reconnects the session to the correct device as the device passes from one base station to another.

Unchain my freedom
There are limits to an architecture like this. It can only create handoffs between APs that are on the same network. It is not an architecture for universal roaming.

Therefore, there is no TowerStream mobile VoIP service—yet. Instead, there's a beta test in New York City that you can participate in by signing up here. The service allows users to roam between TowerStream APs—not between every AP in New York City. "We've had a great response," enthuses Thompson.

Thompson embraces change as helping his business and harming less nimble competitors such as the phone company. "As we've been building this company, we've learned and changed our recipe by listening to customers. Now you have VoIP becoming popular, especially in the last nine to twelve months, and the acceptance was faster than expected. But look at Wi-Fi. Four or five years ago it was rare and now it's harder to get a laptop without it than with it."

He believes that WiMAX will enable his network to prioritize voice packets. In the test in the parking lot, he was testing every VoIP device he could find. "I have a T-Mobile phone with free Wi-Fi Skype, a device with Asterisk for free, and Vonage for $10 per month. I used the T-Mobile, used Vonage, Skype, BroadVoice. Whatever you're using, we want to be able to support. We did really funky things. We used SkypeOut to call Vonage on a laptop. It's wild to do those handoffs at driving speed. We were in parking lots and we were getting weird looks, so we only got to 40 Mph. We didn't get to 70."

He says he's ahead of his customers with this service. Customers are interested in VoIP but are not yet interested in mobile VoIP.

With WiMAX, he'll be able to do VoIP and will remain a step ahead of the phone company. "EV-DO is only 150 Kbps upstream and it's shared so it quickly degrades to dialup."

Be wireless
Thompson remembers being an ISP, and prefers being wireless. "It's very different now than in the ISP days when for $20 everyone wanted to kill us. Now we charge $500 and get great testimonials. They say, 'your guys came a day early' and 'your engineers helped with our BGP setup.' We have a JetBlue cult status with our customers."

In 1994, Thompson co-founded an ISP called EdgeNet in Providence, R.I. that sold dialup using unsold advertising inventory on the local alternative radio station, which was called The Edge. The ISP was sold as eFortress to Citadel Communications, a radio group. It is now part of Orem, Utah-based national ISP Prism Internet Access (not to be confused with Austin's regional ISP PrismNet).

His biggest issue was the same problem every ISP faces. "Our biggest issue was dealing with the phone company."

He's above that now.

—End