WiFi for the park

mobile home university
1

Hi,

We have a park near a large city, but due to zoning as Industrial, we don’t have WiFi from any of the major carriers. Would anyone know the process of getting WiFi to the park?

Again, we don’t want to setup WiFi for the tenants, just bring WiFi to the community so everyone can pay for themselves.

Thank you.

2

Do you have cable or fiber at the road at least (e.g. people can get cable and TV)?

3

@DallasMHP What internet service do you have in the park now if any? If you do not have any service in the park, you should find out what is the closest service connectivity point for cables.

Are you trying to bring the internet service to the community or enable wifi service in the park?

4

Can you clarify what you mean by WiFi? Basic internet service made available to your tenants? Wireless internet access throughout the park?

Without any additional details to go on, your tenants should have at least the following options:

  1. Dial-up-Modem, with a telephone land-line, one could use a dial-up-modem (albeit not the best choice)
  2. Satellite, both HughesNet and Exede provide satellite internet via a surface mounted dish antenna
  3. Cellular Broadband, the cellular carriers all have broadband access via smart phones or portable devices

If none of those are acceptable and if the intent is to bring in a single choice major service provider, much like the setup in an apartment building, then that changes the game a bit.

There are basically two models:

  1. Retail. A provider comes in and sells subscriptions directly to your tenants
  2. Wholesale. You buy service at wholesales and YOU sell subscriptions directly to your tenants.

Judging from your post, it sounds like you are in favor of the retail model.

Like everything else, it will come down to cost and the answer to jhutson’s question:

will go a long way to determine the extent of that cost.

Here is what I would recommend.

  1. See if you have the potential subscriber base to entice one of the carriers to bring service to the park.
  2. Ask your neighboring business tenants what service they have and see if there is an opportunity there.
  3. Lastly, look into service providers offering a ‘Fixed Wireless’ solution. Their infrastructure costs are generally less than that of the wired providers, so their ROI may be satisfied with fewer subscribers. We had to use such a service at one of our offices in Bridgeview, Il and it worked fine.

Bob

1 Like
5

Hi,

We are trying to bring Internet service to the community: DSL or Cable. I am surprised that the community does not have either.

6

Here is detailed answer to the similar question by @RishelConsultingGroup

7

There is a solution that can work if there is Verizon, ATT, Sprint, Etc., 4G in your area. The solution is not designed to stream movies or sound as this would cost a fortune. The application of using this type of service is for bringing internet access to a small group of users, or a single user.

You can visit Cradlepoint - www.cradlepoint.com and they have routers which can provide stand-alone 4G service where the actual router is also a Wifi radio. The IBR600 series -

https://cradlepoint.com/products/cor-ibr600-series

This can provide a very nice signal and has a full-featured firewall built in. Configuration can be a bit tricky for the novice but someone with basic understandings of firewalls, wireless, and switching could configure the solution easily.

This would mostly be used in an office environment but the signal would travel a decent distance in the park. Of course, all the security features necessary are built in to a cradlepoint.

If you wanted to run something more complicated throughout the park, I would recommend Cisco Access Points.

I hope this helps.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Regards,

Mark Rickert

8

A single 4G LTE connection won’t be scalable for a Park with more than 10 users or so. They might as well get their own hotspots.

They really need something run to the road and then cascaded out across the Park using a Wireless Controller and Access Points - or the Park could use some Yagi antennae’s to extend WiFi from Starbucks within their line of sight. I have extended a WiFi network over half a mile away using one of these - granted it was the size of an extension ladder but still it worked.

9

Contact the local land line phone provider in the area and inquire as to what they have available. Assuming there is land line phone service to the community then internet is already available. Dial up defiantly buy highly likely high speed as well. If not then don’t bother getting involved in trying to provide services to a community that do not exist. It is a waste of time and not your concern.