5 ms·

I live in one of those unserved rural areas. Both AT&T and Comcast refuse to run a wire another mile down the road, and since they are the duopoly, tough luck.

I live in one of those unserved rural areas. Both AT&T and Comcast refuse to run a wire another mile down the road, and since they are the duopoly, tough luck. Fortunately we have a local wireless ISP and I get 12Mbps via a 2.4GHz radio link. It's nowhere near as good as wired, but I'm grateful. Another local ISP is working on laying fiber with federal grants but it will take many years. The best analysis I've ever read on why US broadband sucks comes from the CEO of Sonic, a Bay Area independent ISP which is awesome. tl;dr: Michael Powell sold Americans out on false promises of 5 different media for broadband. Turns out only 2 really work. https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/2011/09/02/americas-intentional-broadband-duopoly/ https://corp.sonic.net/ceo/2011/09/02/americas-intentional-b...

twoodfin 10y ago
But US broadband doesn't suck. I invite you to play around with this neat tool from Akamai: https://www.akamai.com/uk/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-internet-report/state-of-the-internet-connectivity-visualization.jsp https://www.akamai.com/uk/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-inter... With a couple of notable exceptions (Sweden, South Korea), the US has as good or better average connection speeds & penetration of high-bandwidth service than its peer developed nations. Italy, France, Germany, Australia all lag the US, some substantially. Personally, my cable-based service has seen regular step-ups in bandwidth with a much lower rate of increase in price. If Powell had insisted on "open access" to last-mile ISP networks 15 years ago, would the capital investments in wired networks have played out as they did? Or would the market have looked like DSL in the US, nominally "competitive" by regulatory fiat, but stagnant?
planteen 10y ago
Can you foot the bill for bringing it another mile down the road? I know you can do that for electric utilities and water to rural land, not sure about phone/cable.
- Omniusaspirer 10y ago
  If he can they'll quote him a figure in the 10's of thousands, and of course expect him to pay normal prices even after paying to build out their network for them.
  - hx87 10y ago
    Tens of thousands sounds about right for running new wires to an undeveloped rural location, but if power & phones are already up, it's ridiculous.
    - dboreham 10y ago
      Hmm...are you sure? Think about the price of a mile of fiber. Then the cost to have it hung on existing poles (which will need specialized trucks and workers certified to work on live power poles) then the cost to have it spliced. Finally the cost to turn up the connection, terminate the fiber. I'm not sure about 10's of K, but I'd be surprised if this will cost less than $10k total even if done on the cheap (cable from eBay etc).
      - amazon_not 10y ago
        $10k isn't even close. It's more like $20-40k per mile all in plus pole attachment fees. On top of that you then pay for service.
amalag 10y ago
If you have line of site you AND you can cut some deal with a person within line of site you can easily do a nice wireless connection with high bandwidth with 5Ghz. Ubiquiti products are nice and can do very high bandwidth. The key is line of site.
- dboreham 10y ago
  Sight.
  - justinlardinois 10y ago
    The fact that he repeated the phrase three times in as many sentences made me wonder if it was a joke.
    - dboreham 10y ago
      Doubt it. This is one of the more common Internet spelling errors (after your/you're). I'd let it slide if the greater body of text indicated the writer wasn't a native English speakr.
- john_reel 10y ago
  Even in poor weather?
  - dvtv75 10y ago
    I've got a 6km link (about 4 miles). Just had some snow, and have had some really bad weather, link has been nice and stable. I'm using Nanobeam M5 16, they aren't installed properly so the link could be a lot better, but that's my fault and not the equipment. Check out their forum at http://forum.ubnt.com http://forum.ubnt.com and you'll see all sorts of situations, long, short, and mid-range.
  - NelsonMinar 10y ago
    Weather doesn't seem to be a problem. There's some signal attenuation in heavy rain / snow but all I've seen is a 20% bandwidth reduction, not a failure. The one time I had failure was with a heavy buildup of snow on the antenna.
ddxv 10y ago
How does the radio work? Do you need line of site to the tower? Mind sharing your experience, or name of such companies? My father uses satellite, it's the only option I was aware of, but it's painful. I would love to learn about other possibilities. I've searched for wireless ISPs but it's a bit difficult to tell which ones are any good.
- amazon_not 10y ago
  > How does the radio work? You need a sender at the Internet connection and a receiver at the end user. The radio link can be either dedicated to you (point-to-point) or shared (point-to-multipoint). > Do you need line of site to the tower? Preferably yes. It may work without line of sight, but at reduced performance. > Mind sharing your experience, or name of such companies? http://www.wispa.org/ http://www.wispdirectory.com/ http://www.wirelessmapping.com/National-Coverage-Map-for-Fixed-Wireless-ISP's.php > I've searched for wireless ISPs but it's a bit difficult to tell which ones are any good. It's not like you are going to have lots of options. You take what you get. It will be better than satellite in any case.
- NelsonMinar 10y ago
  Good bandwidth requires clear line of sight. (You can get ~2Mbps through tree cover at 900Mhz). A lot of rural areas, at least in America, also have local ISPs providing service this way. You can also make own wireless link ~5 miles with gear from Ubiquiti or the like. It works basically like 802.11 WiFi but projected in one direction, and some protocol details are different. My ISP is in Nevada County, CA http://www.smarterbroadband.com/ http://www.smarterbroadband.com/ San Francisco has a cool ISP doing this in the city: https://www.monkeybrains.net/ https://www.monkeybrains.net/

twoodfin 10y ago

But US broadband doesn't suck. I invite you to play around with this neat tool from Akamai: https://www.akamai.com/uk/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-internet-report/state-of-the-internet-connectivity-visualization.jsp https://www.akamai.com/uk/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-inter... With a couple of notable exceptions (Sweden, South Korea), the US has as good or better average connection speeds & penetration of high-bandwidth service than its peer developed nations. Italy, France, Germany, Australia all lag the US, some substantially. Personally, my cable-based service has seen regular step-ups in bandwidth with a much lower rate of increase in price. If Powell had insisted on "open access" to last-mile ISP networks 15 years ago, would the capital investments in wired networks have played out as they did? Or would the market have looked like DSL in the US, nominally "competitive" by regulatory fiat, but stagnant?

planteen 10y ago

Can you foot the bill for bringing it another mile down the road? I know you can do that for electric utilities and water to rural land, not sure about phone/cable.

Omniusaspirer 10y ago
If he can they'll quote him a figure in the 10's of thousands, and of course expect him to pay normal prices even after paying to build out their network for them.
- hx87 10y ago
  Tens of thousands sounds about right for running new wires to an undeveloped rural location, but if power & phones are already up, it's ridiculous.
  - dboreham 10y ago
    Hmm...are you sure? Think about the price of a mile of fiber. Then the cost to have it hung on existing poles (which will need specialized trucks and workers certified to work on live power poles) then the cost to have it spliced. Finally the cost to turn up the connection, terminate the fiber. I'm not sure about 10's of K, but I'd be surprised if this will cost less than $10k total even if done on the cheap (cable from eBay etc).
    - amazon_not 10y ago
      $10k isn't even close. It's more like $20-40k per mile all in plus pole attachment fees. On top of that you then pay for service.

amalag 10y ago

If you have line of site you AND you can cut some deal with a person within line of site you can easily do a nice wireless connection with high bandwidth with 5Ghz. Ubiquiti products are nice and can do very high bandwidth. The key is line of site.

dboreham 10y ago
Sight.
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  The fact that he repeated the phrase three times in as many sentences made me wonder if it was a joke.
  - dboreham 10y ago
    Doubt it. This is one of the more common Internet spelling errors (after your/you're). I'd let it slide if the greater body of text indicated the writer wasn't a native English speakr.
john_reel 10y ago
Even in poor weather?
- dvtv75 10y ago
  I've got a 6km link (about 4 miles). Just had some snow, and have had some really bad weather, link has been nice and stable. I'm using Nanobeam M5 16, they aren't installed properly so the link could be a lot better, but that's my fault and not the equipment. Check out their forum at http://forum.ubnt.com http://forum.ubnt.com and you'll see all sorts of situations, long, short, and mid-range.
- NelsonMinar 10y ago
  Weather doesn't seem to be a problem. There's some signal attenuation in heavy rain / snow but all I've seen is a 20% bandwidth reduction, not a failure. The one time I had failure was with a heavy buildup of snow on the antenna.

ddxv 10y ago

How does the radio work? Do you need line of site to the tower? Mind sharing your experience, or name of such companies? My father uses satellite, it's the only option I was aware of, but it's painful. I would love to learn about other possibilities. I've searched for wireless ISPs but it's a bit difficult to tell which ones are any good.

amazon_not 10y ago
> How does the radio work? You need a sender at the Internet connection and a receiver at the end user. The radio link can be either dedicated to you (point-to-point) or shared (point-to-multipoint). > Do you need line of site to the tower? Preferably yes. It may work without line of sight, but at reduced performance. > Mind sharing your experience, or name of such companies? http://www.wispa.org/ http://www.wispdirectory.com/ http://www.wirelessmapping.com/National-Coverage-Map-for-Fixed-Wireless-ISP's.php > I've searched for wireless ISPs but it's a bit difficult to tell which ones are any good. It's not like you are going to have lots of options. You take what you get. It will be better than satellite in any case.
NelsonMinar 10y ago
Good bandwidth requires clear line of sight. (You can get ~2Mbps through tree cover at 900Mhz). A lot of rural areas, at least in America, also have local ISPs providing service this way. You can also make own wireless link ~5 miles with gear from Ubiquiti or the like. It works basically like 802.11 WiFi but projected in one direction, and some protocol details are different. My ISP is in Nevada County, CA http://www.smarterbroadband.com/ http://www.smarterbroadband.com/ San Francisco has a cool ISP doing this in the city: https://www.monkeybrains.net/ https://www.monkeybrains.net/