A private family grant to build a technology lab in 2002 has sparked a computer-savvy community at Montevalle, a senior mobile home park in Scotts Valley.
For the past eight years, the lab has provided computer literacy courses and a place to surf the Internet. Retired engineer Bob Cotterman said the lab is what ignited the community’s desire to go wireless, which it’s been steadily doing the past two years.
“The lab is what led to having residents that are computer literate and wanting wireless,” Cotterman said. “The problem was cost, but we found a way to make it less expensive.”
Cotterman and Bill Fabry, another Montevalle resident and Cisco engineer, have run the lab and the computer courses since they began.
Together, the pair has set up a wireless network for the entire Montevalle community.
“Instead of everyone paying separately for a single household network, we were able to put everyone on the same one,” Cotterman said.
While dial-up would have been the least expensive Internet option, Cotterman advises against it.
“It ties up the phone line, and if there is an emergency, then that’s a problem,” he explained. “The best solution was to go wireless.”
Montevalle has 220 lots on its sprawling property, and 91 have Wi-Fi coverage, he said. Cotterman started setting up wireless at the park in sections. Now, the community has 17 repeaters, which relay the wireless signal from one point to another around the park.
Cotterman predicts the network will continue to create an even more computer-savvy set of seniors, much as the lab has already done.
“Already, there are many people wanting to explore the possibilities of the Internet, like streaming Netflix and things like that,” he said.
“Every week, more and more people call me wanting to get on the network.”
The cost for each household that chooses to join the network is $15 a month, Cotterman said.
He expects the price to go down to $10 a month in 2011. Paying for an Internet connection can cost more than $40 on an individual basis.
Sharing the same network cut wireless costs down to a third of the average, Cotterman said.
“What we really wanted was to make it affordable for all,” he said. “And that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
