Broadband innovation on the wireless frontier | Berkman Center

18 years ago, Brett Glass -- an electrical engineer, inventor, and technology columnist -- established LARIAT, the first terrestrial wireless Internet service provider (WISP), in Laramie, Wyoming. He did it, initially, not as an entrepreneurial venture (the network started as a nonprofit co-op) but to solve a problem for his community: Laramie had no high speed Internet other than that on the University of Wyoming campus (which at the time had just upgraded from a few T1 lines to an almost unimaginably fast DS-3).

The network made innovative use of early spread spectrum digital radio technology -- the great granddaddy of Wi-Fi -- to provide high speed Internet years before DSL or cable modem service was available, and continues to reach areas where these services do not go...