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Delray man single-handedly works to make city wireless
(South Florida Sun-Sentinel (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Aug. 9--It's a bright, hot summer morning, and Brad Bowman, 45, is sitting at the living room coffee table in his Delray Beach house.
From there, he serves as program director for Access Delray, the company he founded in February 2007 to "bridge the digital divide" for communities after watching attempts to establish a Wi-Fi network in Delray Beach fail the past few years. With a cell phone, calculator, notebook and laptop computer, Bowman leads a one-man crusade to make Wi-Fi throughout the city a reality.
"A normal day for me is getting up at 5 a.m., then taking care of all my personal work until 8:30 a.m., when the calls start to come in," Bowman said. "The bottom line is I'm just trying to build a plan for Delray's broadband future."
When Bowman learned the city's negotiations with E-Path Communications to develop a wireless network weren't going to work, he started Access Delray. City commissioners fired E-Path because it was moving too slowly in building the network it was hired to create.
E-Path never started the project because it was dependent on transmissions from stations on local utility poles that the city was replacing.
That's when Bowman began to plan a system utilizing WiMAX, the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, a telecommunications technology that provides wireless data in a variety of ways. He said the infrastructure for such a network would cost $2.5 million.
Bowman is trying to raise capital for the project.
"Absolutely no city money [will be used]," he said. "They have enough to deal with."
He plans to use other types of city assets, such as an existing base station at City Hall with which he plans to demonstrate the system's capabilities, which would cover six miles in downtown Delray Beach. Residents would be asked to pay a monthly fee for WiMAX, replacing cable or high-speed Internet service providers.
"I can't wait to cut the cord and have ubiquitous access throughout the city," Bowman said. "No more limits. I can take my laptop out to the pool, the beach, a community park, anywhere in the city."
A few more base stations would have to be installed around the city to make all of Delray Beach wireless.
Two other companies have joined Bowman's proposal.
Bowman said he has discussed the legal implications of the project with Assistant City Attorney Brian Shutt. The project has not received City Commission approval, but Bowman made a presentation at a recent workshop, after which commissioners agreed to let Bowman work with the city's IT department to see if the project is viable.
David DiPino can be reached at or 954-621-5000.
To see more of The South Florida Sun-Sentinel or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sun-sentinel.com/.
Copyright (c) 2008, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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