Houston grandmother becomes host of first ‘super WiFi’ hotspot, proves you’re never too old for wireless

Apr 20th 2011
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This ain’t your grandma’s WiFi — that’s, unless your grandma is 48 year-old Leticia Aguirre. The Houston woman became the host of the first actual “super WiFi” hotspot, earlier this week — the recent network takes benefit of unused UHF TV channels to bring internet service to underserved communities. In collaboration with researchers at Rice University, a Houston-based non-profit fittingly often known as Technology for All (TFA), facilitated the setup and is inside the strategy of deploying more whitespace hotspots around the area. The FCC approved use of whitespace for the recent “super WiFi” back in September of last year. Full PR after the break.

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Houston grandmother is nation’s first ‘Super Wi-Fi’ user
Rice University, Houston nonprofit use dormant TV channel for residential broadband

When the Federal Communications Commission worked out the foundations last fall to transform unused TV channels for a brand new long-range, wall-piercing version of Wi-Fi, Houston resident Leticia Aguirre had no way of knowing that she’d host the nation’s first residential “Super Wi-Fi” hot spot.

“I’ve desired to have the web for a very long time, but it surely’s very expensive” said Aguirre, 48, a working grandmother and homeowner who’s never had a competent Internet connection at her home.

Way to a partnership between Rice University wireless communications researchers and Houston nonprofit Technology For All (TFA), Aguirre’s home became a brilliant Wi-Fi hot spot this month. TFA and Rice plan to feature more Super Wi-Fi links in Aguirre’s neighborhood in coming months, and with companies racing to develop Super Wi-Fi technology, the kind of network that Rice and TFA are deploying for three,000 residents in East Houston could become a typical fixture in cities and rural areas within the coming decade.

“We’ve federal support from the National Science Foundation to develop this technology in an open-source way,” said Rice’s Edward Knightly, professor in electrical and computer engineering, whose research group built the prototype Super Wi-Fi equipment that Aguirre is using. “Ultimately, we wish to develop this technology in the sort of way that it benefits the foremost people by accessing the appropriate spectrum for the ideal users. Having Mrs. Aguirre as our first user really shows the possible benefits for those who’ve been underserved with traditional broadband.”

When Knightly’s research group teamed up with TFA to launch a free community broadband Wi-Fi network within the East Houston neighborhood of Pecan Park in 2004, Aguirre was one of several first homeowners to comply with host a Wi-Fi hot spot. That network, TFA-Wireless, now serves a 3-square-mile area. But Aguirre, who lives on the fringe of the network, hasn’t ever received a very good Wi-Fi signal at her home.

Aguirre said she got so frustrated with the normal Wi-Fi that she considered asking TFA to take away the Wi-Fi antenna from her home.

“But i want the web to look that my paychecks were deposited and to do other things,” she said. “Once they called me to peer if i wished to do this, it was a solution to my prayers.”

Aguirre said she is calling forward to using email and Skype to stick in contact with family and friends, including her three children and her five-year-old grandson, and to watching religious videos online and learning more about how a working laptop or computer may help her in her lifestyle.

The unique TFA-Wireless network was designed as a test bed for urban “multihop” Wi-Fi technology. In late 2010, just because the FCC established its rules for Super Wi-Fi, Knightly’s team received a brand new grant from the National Science Foundation to include Super Wi-Fi into the TFA-Wireless network.

“Mrs. Aguirre was the correct user for this due to the problems we had serving her with traditional Wi-Fi,” said Ryan Guerra, a Rice graduate student who spent several months creating the Super Wi-Fi equipment that TFA-Wireless installed at Aguirre’s home. To users, the brand new hot spot seems like another; it may be accessed with any Wi-Fi device. Backstage, the network uses “dynamic spectrum access” to automatically shift between traditional Wi-Fi and unused UHF digital TV channels to offer the absolute best coverage.

“This Super Wi-Fi technology is a quantum leap in relation to the tip-user experience that it’ll let us provide to users on our network,” said Will Reed, president and CEO of TFA.

“The truth that it truly is happening in a community-broadband setting is very important besides, because this technology has a true potential to collapse barriers and produce broadband to underserved urban and rural communities,” said Reed, who has served both as another member of the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee and as a member of the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee Working Group on Rural and Underserved Populations.