Mainebiz

V O L . X X I I N O. V M A R C H 7 , 2 0 1 6 16 R edzone Wireless LLC — a startup backed by a $4 million loan from Camden National Bank that's insured by the Finance Authority of Maine — has staked its future on wireless tech- nology as a low-cost alternative to traditional fiber- optic and cable Internet connections. Since launching its 4G LTE network in Portland last June, Redzone achieved its first-year goal of providing broadband coverage for 25% of Maine's households and now has 20 employees. Building on that momentum, in February the company reported that it tripled its broadband network capacity and coverage in Portland; activated its first high-speed municipal free Wi-Fi network in midcoast Maine; and launched a broadband service for Maine businesses with speeds up to 20 times faster than ConnectME Authority's broadband standard. Mainebiz met with Jim McKenna, Redzone's founder and president, and Michael Forcillo, the company's vice president of sales and marketing, to discuss the company's growth and future goals. e following is an edited transcript of the conversation that took place at the Mainebiz office in Portland. Mainebiz: What's your footprint in Maine? Jim McKenna: In the last eight months we've expanded our coverage area to more than 25% of Maine households. Our stated objective is to provide coverage for 90% of Maine's population by 2018, and we have a plan to get there. e technology supports our plan. We have the resources in terms of everything from financing to personnel to the technology and we're executing on that plan and we feel like it's on track. MB: What differentiates your broadband services from your competition using wireless, fiber-optic and cable broadband technologies? JM: Our wireless network costs 95% less than the cost of providing broadband via wireline. When you put our equipment on a tower in the center of a community you immediately have coverage to all, or most, of the residents in that town. So our prices are very competitive in the mar- ketplace. We feel we are offering the best price for performance of any broadband service option. MB: 2015 was certainly a year of rapid growth. What's driving that growth? JM: e market demand is one aspect of it, another is the technology. We're moving toward a 'small cell architecture' that's going to inject tremendous capac- ity and further lower our costs to the point where it allows our network to reach farther and farther into the rural areas. Our ability to deploy 4G LTE on a licensed spectrum is enabled by our relationship with the University of Maine System. We have invested a considerable sum of money and have made a com- mitment for the next 30 years to lease this 2.5 giga- hertz band spectrum from the UMaine system. It's known as EBS, which stands for Education Broadcast Service spectrum, and it was used back before the days of Internet by education systems to distribute content using video. Well, those days are gone. Now the university systems transport everything over broadband. So it was an asset that wasn't used and the FCC allowed the universities to monetize these assets by leasing them to private entities that can make use of them. MB: How does your wireless technology address the challenge of serving those more rural areas of Maine? Michael Forcillo: It's all about economic viability. Wireline has an area in the state where it is economically viable. But Redzone, with a 95% lower cost to deploy, has a much larger economi- cally viable geographic area that we can serve. With the declining cost of the equipment and improved performance of the wireless equipment that we're getting access to, we see that there's a convergence point where over 90% of the state between now and 2018 will all be economically viable. We have a path to do it without public support and we will pursue that as aggressively as we can, but additional public support and funding may accelerate that process for us and allow us to get that done a lot faster. We're open to all avenues to get the job done, whether it's private or public-private partnerships. MB: Has the publicly funded Three-Ring Binder initiative helped you in any way? JM: It hasn't, to date, helped us. But, in general, our industry has derived great benefit from it. And as we get out into rural communities, we will directly ben- efit from it as well. We can envision a situation where we are marching through a community where there is fiber from end to end and we are just daisy-chain- ing small cell 4G LTE in order to cover every home within one square mile of each of those radios. MF: To add a little to that: e ree-Ring Binder is not really the essential network that connects our 600 towers. When we start using next-generation small cell and micro-cell equipment that is going to be bet- ter suited for the ree-Ring Binder. We think we can be one of the companies that can get the most use out of it to connect people in the rural communities. MB: After getting established in more densely populated areas, what are the challenges of going into rural areas? JM: ere are economic benefits, obviously, to Michael Forcillo, left, vice president of sales and marketing at Redzone Wireless, and Jim McKenna, Redzone's president, have plans for aggressive expansion in Maine, saying they hope to provide coverage to 90% of Maine's population by 2018. They're pictured in Portland. P H O T O / T I M G R E E N WAY Maine's broadband alternative Redzone Wireless builds momentum for its wireless technology B y J a m e s M c C a r t h y F O C U S

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