The county's wireless broadband project has four subscribers less than two months before work has to be done, but officials expect the situation to change shortly.
The Allegany County Board of Legislators voted 13-1 to enter into lease agreements with seven area fire departments: Andover, Rushford, Oramel, Short Tract, Wiscoy-Rossburg, Belfast and Cuba fire departments; AT&T, Auxiliary Campus Enterprises & Services at Alfred State College and WXXI Public Broadcasting Council. Those agreements would allow the county to install smaller “microcell” equipment on existing towers owned by the entities, allowing better service for areas not served directly by one of the county's 13 main towers.
Two last-mile providers may connect customers to the system, Win-Win Wireless of Houghton and, more recently, Tel Star Inc. of Varysburg. Win-Win has signed up a handful of customers only, said Legislator Phil Curran, R-Alfred Station, who also chairs the Allegany County Telecommunications Development Corp. board of directors, but said that was only because the system was unable to connect to all the towers in the county.
There's four right now, but in the next week the system should be entirely operable,” Curan said.
On Wednesday, the county's planning and economic development committee learned that connections to the Corbin Hill tower near Belmont — currently the only one operational — will soon be able to connect through new towers in Alma and Angelica. Once those towers are online, officials said the network will be able to add subscribers countywide.
Initial speed tests of the system were promising this spring, with a download rate of about 10 megabits per second. That speed is on par with a typical cable modem — and about 400 times faster than a dial-up modem, based on 1980s technology which is still the only option for some rural residents.
The only real requirement for connecting to the system is a clear line of sight from the tower to the subscriber, which is more of a problem in the southern part of the county.
The microcell towers, which are 65 to 80 feet tall and consist of a single pole with transceiver equipment for local connections, will connect to the main towers in areas that have limited line of sight to the main towers. A microcell would likely go in a small hamlet with dozens of potential customers.
