Proposal from Country Wireless would bring learning to students

Got your Chromebook for school? Educational needs can change, and to that end, the Stanley-Body Board of Education opted to purchase 100 Chromebooks from Krista Computers at its February board meeting. Said Chromebooks are due to cost the district $29,575 from its technology funds budget, although paid through the library fund. Upon questioning by member Chad Verbeten, it was revealed that said Chromebooks are stored in the library for elementary students, the technological investment necessary so that S- B district students can learn their lessons in the present digital age, whether on site or from far away. But what if you aren’t on the school campus and the internet won’t reach, or else isn’t fast enough?

Enter Country Wireless of Spencer, Wisconsin. Appearing after the school board meeting at the March 1 regular City Council meeting was Country Wireless General Manager Jeremy Carolfi, who was present along with Jeff Koenig to update the Council on what it would take to get the signal where it needed to be. Koenig thanked Carolfi at the March 1Council meeting for being willing to listen, as the district had approached different vendors.

“I thank him for pursuing it because I reached out to him as well as just about every internet provider that considers Stanley-Boyd their coverage area,” he said. “Country Wireless was the one willing to try and expand things.” Carolfi went into details of proposed coverage, which would entail two rather than just one tower.

“The lower water tower has Charter right next to it,” Carolfi said, saying that Country Wireless had an agreement with said company to buy wholesale “so we can get the service to you.” Without the wholesale agreement, Carolfi said it would mean trying “to pipe it to you from Spencer,” which he called “highly costly and wildly impractical.” As for the extent of the proposed coverage it would be up to six miles north of town, at 130th Avenue. But there was a reason for the cutoff.

“We design these towers to radiate no more than six miles,” Carolfi said in response to a coverage question from Ward 3 alderman Jacob Huff. “At six miles we start stepping on ourselves. There are only so many channels and spectrum available.” The next tower that Country Wireless has is reportedly in Thorp, with competitors in the area as well. The bottom line of it all was that internet providers had to cooperate to make sure everyone’s hardware worked—no crossed wires.

As to the details for transmission, Carolfi said that Country Wireless would install a transmitter on the tower with Charter as well as a point-to-point antenna that would “talk

See WI-FI, page 9

Broadcasting from the local water towers, Country Wireless of Spencer Wisconsin recently unveiled a proposal that would see Wi-Fi coverage stretch from Stanley as pictured above, all the way to the Colburn town border at 130th Avenue. Staff photos. WI-FI

FROM PAGE 1 to the tower up on the hill by the prison.” The transmission towers would combine a 5 Ghz frequency “not to be confused with 5G” with a 3.56 Ghz CBRS band and capable of up to 50 (Mbps) Carolfi said, though noting that most customers got by on less than this.

“That band is licensed by the federal government,” Carolfi said of CBRS, meaning there were some “light hoops” to jump through. The federal government defines high-speed broadband, meanwhile, as being 25 Mbps. Kevin Hendrickson had a question for Carolfi March 1.

“And if I as a homeowner in the City of Stanley wanted to buy into this?”

“You could get service in the city as well,” Carolfi told Hendrickson, making Country Wireless the City’s effective provider. Koenig said that the school district provided students with hotspots, but that these were for areas where “their (Country Wireless) coverage won’t go as well,” Koenig said. “Where there is no coverage whatsoever.”

As to Country Wireless and the six-mile radius, meanwhile, Carolfi said that a coverage map provided to Council members was “a computer- generated best guess,” which could be inaccurate at times. Carolfi said that some sites serviced by the company wanted flat rates while others wanted meters, and that “it doesn’t really matter how you want to do that,” he said of the flat rate versus metered cost structure. The water towers themselves as used by the company tended to be sealed environments with access by key. But as to painting the towers in a year or two?

“As far as the painting water towers goes, we’ve had this in a lot of other communities,” Carolfi said, saying that the easiest way was to wrap the wires in a bag until everything was done, with no big problems foreseen from this.

By the end of the night the matter was left between Carolfi and city water operator Don Goettl for further discussion.