Washington State and B.C. marinas get Wi-Fi: An entrepreneur has unwired 21 marinas. Service can be reached in some places 2 miles out of the marina, and costs $6.95 per day or $39.95 per month. Better yet, the company says they have 1,000 people signed up, although from the article it's hard to tell whether that means "sessions and subscriptions" or just subscriptions. $40,000 per month would be a nice starting point, if it's all monthly revenue.
Although another group, Wheat Wireless's TeleSea division, claimed to have unwired marinas around North America, their coverage map hasn't been updated since 2002 and their press releases end in March 2003. (The company posted a comment below -- has anyone used their service in any marina?)
Sounds like this guy may be using illegal EIRP output. A pair of 1W amps on the antenna's he mentioned would be 4 to 16+ times the FCC EIRP limits for outdoor omnidirectional.
Has anyone heard of the FCC cracking down on such uses? I know of at least three WISP in the portland OR area that are running illegal power levels, but no one seems to care or even notice (except the war drivers, who see their signal splatter across the metro for dozens of miles)
Hi. My name is Lori and I work for Wheat Wireless’s TeleSea Division. Currently TeleSea is offering two high-speed Internet service plans: TeleSea Gold and TeleSea Basic. The TeleSea Gold plan offers a broadband link for mariners traveling up to thirty miles from the shore line. The TeleSea Basic plan provides Internet service for selected marinas in our coverage areas.
Wheat Wireless has designed and built and the entire network. We have tested our network and it follows all of the FCC guidelines.
We also are getting ready to launch TeleSea Blue, which is our satellite high-speed Internet service this month.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any more questions at lrasmuss@wheatintl.com. Thanks.
Coderman, The FCC cares, but I dare to say there will be no "crackdown". If someone is experiencing interference in the ISM bands and they do the legwork to track down the interference, the FCC may send a letter. If you continue to complain and the violator continues operating with illegal EIRP, the FCC might send out an engineer resulting in more letters and finally an Order to Show Cause.
I should have said three antenna locations and not WISP's, as I don't know which WISP, if any, is running these AP/Repeaters.
Also, after checking out the broadband express site, the high powered RF mentioned in the article may be the 200mW cards they strongly suggest and sell their clients. These definitely work better for long range! :-)