Perkowski, Mike (2007): Rural Wireless: Umatilla County built a network for an application it doesn't want to deploy…and now uses it for everything else. Muniwireless Magazine, March 2007, p. 28-34. http://www.muniwireless.com/reports/MW005.pdf
This article gives a brief introduction to the Umatilla County rural wireless network in eastern Oregon (75,000 residents, 3,200 square miles, 13 municipalities). It is an example of a model for a rural, county-wide wireless network, and for how communities can build on one initial wireless application to offer an increasing number of services to residents. The initial motivation for the network is a special case: it came for the need for a system to notify emergency responders and residents in case of a poisonous gas plume coming from a nearby U.S. Army depot, where chemical weapons are incinerated. Research for the network begin in 2002, the network went live with CSEPP (Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program) in 2004, and public safety and other applications were deployed immediately after that. The network was built and is owned by EZ Wireless, the municipalities are network tenants. Initial funding came from U.S. Army and Federal Emergency Management Agency, among others. EZ Wireless offers residential 1 Mbps service for $29 per month; before the network, only dial-up service was available.