5 ms·

How common are regional wireless ISPs?

grahamburger 10y ago
Depends on the area, I'm in the US Rocky Mountain area and they're very common here. In my experience they're more common in suburbs / rural areas than urban areas.
paulddraper 10y ago
I know a few in my area, like Utah Broadband. And that's just from my casual knowledge.
- grahamburger 10y ago
  Yup I know the guys at Utah Broadband :) I worked at Rise broadband (used to be Digis) for about 10 years, if you know Utah Broadband you've probably heard of them? Vivint was doing some of this in Utah as well, I spent a few years with them.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    Yes to Digis, and yes to Vivint. (This reminds me...Vivint aquired SpaceMonkey and there was talk of including SM's distributed storage devices in the routers.)
    - grahamburger 10y ago
      I left Vivint about a year ago. At the time that feature was still vapor-ware :-) may have changed since then, I'm not sure.
cookiecaper 10y ago
There was a really small one that serviced half of my apartment complex in Pleasant Grove, Utah back in 2006 or so. A colleague who lived in the same complex told me about them. I called to see if I could sign up and the guy came out to my apartment and told me that because my apartment faced the inner courtyard, I wouldn't get good service, so he couldn't sign me up. :\ The ONLY internet access available was provided by the apartment complex itself. I think they had a few T1s split between a couple hundred units. Even 10 years ago, that was still embarrassingly bad. It was unusable in the evenings or weekends. You could do a traditional ARP spoof and read everyone's traffic. Really bad stuff. I had no option but to deal. I set up a VPN to protect and compress my traffic and spent weekends at the homes of friends and family. These days, I hear wireless ISPs are far more versatile and reliable. They're great options for people who get stuck like I was (as long as your apartment points the right direction!).
- grahamburger 10y ago
  Lol, I grew up in Pleasant Grove. I might even know what complex you're talking about :) small world.
kspaans 10y ago
Even my hometown in very rural Northern Ontario (New Liskeard, ON) has had a regional WISP for over 10 years (http://www.parolink.net/ http://www.parolink.net/). From what I remember, the trickiest part for them is many homes were surrounded by trees. So if you didn't already have a TV antenna tower, you were out of luck.

Depends on the area, I'm in the US Rocky Mountain area and they're very common here. In my experience they're more common in suburbs / rural areas than urban areas.

paulddraper 10y ago

I know a few in my area, like Utah Broadband. And that's just from my casual knowledge.

grahamburger 10y ago
Yup I know the guys at Utah Broadband :) I worked at Rise broadband (used to be Digis) for about 10 years, if you know Utah Broadband you've probably heard of them? Vivint was doing some of this in Utah as well, I spent a few years with them.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Yes to Digis, and yes to Vivint. (This reminds me...Vivint aquired SpaceMonkey and there was talk of including SM's distributed storage devices in the routers.)
  - grahamburger 10y ago
    I left Vivint about a year ago. At the time that feature was still vapor-ware :-) may have changed since then, I'm not sure.

cookiecaper 10y ago

There was a really small one that serviced half of my apartment complex in Pleasant Grove, Utah back in 2006 or so. A colleague who lived in the same complex told me about them. I called to see if I could sign up and the guy came out to my apartment and told me that because my apartment faced the inner courtyard, I wouldn't get good service, so he couldn't sign me up. :\ The ONLY internet access available was provided by the apartment complex itself. I think they had a few T1s split between a couple hundred units. Even 10 years ago, that was still embarrassingly bad. It was unusable in the evenings or weekends. You could do a traditional ARP spoof and read everyone's traffic. Really bad stuff. I had no option but to deal. I set up a VPN to protect and compress my traffic and spent weekends at the homes of friends and family. These days, I hear wireless ISPs are far more versatile and reliable. They're great options for people who get stuck like I was (as long as your apartment points the right direction!).

grahamburger 10y ago
Lol, I grew up in Pleasant Grove. I might even know what complex you're talking about :) small world.

kspaans 10y ago

Even my hometown in very rural Northern Ontario (New Liskeard, ON) has had a regional WISP for over 10 years (http://www.parolink.net/ http://www.parolink.net/). From what I remember, the trickiest part for them is many homes were surrounded by trees. So if you didn't already have a TV antenna tower, you were out of luck.