Communication Infrastructure for Alabama's Black Belt Region
Rural wireless broadband services in United States of America is extremely fragmented, with very few companies realizing any economies of scale in their businesses. Despite their efforts, rural markets continue to lag their urban and suburban counterparts in terms of home broadband penetration by over 20 percent (approximately 45% versus 65% broadband penetration for rural and urban, respectively). This leads to "broadband black holes" in sparsely populated rural Black belt areas.
Auburn University’s expertise in Wireless Engineering funded by the Outreach department has helped forge unique alliances towards solving the Black belt connectivity problem. The Outreach identified Uniontown, AL, in Perry County for an experiment in wireless broadband connectivity. The Wireless Engineering Research and Education Center (WEREC) identified the public library and the high school for this pilot project.
The project involved setting up of wireless access points at strategic locations at both the identified sites. Several Linksys 802.11g broadband wireless routers operating in the 2.4GHz ISM band (model no. WRT54G) were used for this purpose. Once the campus wide network was completely setup, Dell Laptops with wireless cards were loaned to the library and the high school to to jump start the broadband wireless initiative.
Photo Log:
| R. C. H. High School, Uniontown, AL | R. C. H. School Library | Wireless Routers deployed at Uniontown |
| WEREC team at work at Uniontown Public Library | WEREC team with Ms. Joann Robinson, head librarian, Uniontown Public Library |
