June 3, 2005

Virgin Territory: St. Croix Goes Broadband

St. Croix in the Virgin Islands finally will get broadband, starting in July. That’s no mean feat for a small island 44 miles across the ocean from the nearest broadband point of presence. The service is being provided by Communications Technology (COMTek), whose President and CEO Joseph Fergus is a Virgin Islands native who grew up on St. Croix.

In order to get broadband to St. Croix, COMtek has melded leased capacity on an undersea cable to St. Thomas with a microwave link powered by Orthogon Systems hardware to handle backhaul across the ocean. Once on the island, the company is installing Motorola Canopy 5 GHz wireless for last-mile delivery to users. COMTek couldn’t simply use Canopy for the whole thing, explained the company’s Engineering Director Steve Foster, because “a 44-mile shot is a little out of reach for Canopy.”

The entire system got a shakedown run two weeks ago when the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police (ACCP) held its annual conference in St. Croix, and COMTek dished up its broadband at the island resort hosting the convention, providing broadband, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and remote wireless video surveillance for the meeting.

"There is simply no excuse for offering sub-par broadband in this day and age. The people of the U.S. Virgin Islands deserve the best available technology, and we are on a mission to make sure that they get it at an affordable price," Fergus says. Initially, the St. Croix broadband will be offered to residents of Christianisted, the main town on the island, and then it will be expanded to cover the entire island.