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4G killed all WISPs and all wired competition that wasn’t CATV or fiber in markets where you had access to unlimited flat-rate 4G. 5G is just the nail in the c

4G killed all WISPs and all wired competition that wasn’t CATV or fiber in markets where you had access to unlimited flat-rate 4G. 5G is just the nail in the coffin.

BenjiWiebe 4y ago
There's still (rural US) markets where 4G isn't reliable. WISPs can do great in those areas yet.
- uni_rule 4y ago
  I always thought the use case for WISPs was for places that have at best the fiber line built for "a cell tower" but are otherwise cut off from more solid ISPs who want home internet or for places that are best have shitty ADSL. That of course means people in distant nowhere. I never thought of WISPs existing elsewhere as it doesn't make nearly as much sense if you have access to "real" broadband. I suppose this niche was wider at one point?
  - cestith 4y ago
    20 years ago, wireless was the only affordable way for us to serve residential customers faster than ISDN or in some cases dialup in a lot of small towns. We could get FR or ATM to a business, but we couldn't make it affordable for most homes.
- Arrath 4y ago
  Yes, this. There are areas where 4g isn't great, let alone 5g.
- vlan0 4y ago
  For sure! I drive right through the mountains in the ADK often. Unless you're in a well populated village, there is no cell service at all. Break down on the road and you're walking 10+ miles.
  - kotaKat 4y ago
    That also leads to slippery-slope politics with the Adirondack Park Agency as to why cellsite adoption has been so slow and frustrating. Speaking as someone who used to live in Long Lake and had to drive to the edge of the hamlet down at a bridge just to get a single bar to check back in on family, I certainly wish the APA would loosen up a bit more on just letting towers go up.
hocuspocus 4y ago
> all wired competition that wasn’t CATV or fiber That isn't entirely true, G.fast is a pretty decent alternative here, unlimited 4G/5G is too unreliable for a lot of people.
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  Thanks to unfavorable geography I get no cell phone service where I live. My power lines go through a beaver swamp so conditions are highly unfavorable for FTTH. (The power company does go through every few years in an off-road vehicle to limb up the trees and if we had a realistic commitment to universal service we'd just run fiber everywhere the power lines go and it would be taken care of eventually) I have 2 ADSL2 lines that connect to a fiber node a bit more than a mile away, each gets about 20 Mbps of bandwidth. Spectrum gives a lot more bandwidth for less money just 2.5 miles away, but I really get 100% of what I am paying for almost all of the time so I can't complain too much.
  - coryrc 4y ago
    I think it's ridiculous you want massive subsidies for luxury speeds while living in the middle of nowhere.
    - PaulHoule 4y ago
      Look at how conservatives would howl if there wasn't a universal mandate for electric power everywhere. I mean, if we weren't entitled to energy from coal we'd have to put up solar panels. Had we really been thinking straight about the "information superhighway" in 1994 we would have just decided it was a function of the electric company and strung an optic fiber along with the power lines and it would have been "least cost". People writing about the future in the 1970s expected we would go straight to fiber without detours into CATV, DSL, spotty, expensive and low-performing wireless systems, etc.
      - mickdeek86 4y ago
        Why did we take the scenic route?
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> in markets where you had access to unlimited flat-rate 4G. WISPs should be quite safe in the USA, then; data caps are still everywhere. Actually, I had a data cap even on wired fiber, just higher.
- selectodude 4y ago
  Neither Verizon or T-Mobile's home internet products have data caps. In fact, of the four ISPs my home has access to, Comcast Xfinity is the only one that has a cap.

4G killed all WISPs and all wired competition that wasn’t CATV or fiber in markets where you had access to unlimited flat-rate 4G. 5G is just the nail in the coffin.

BenjiWiebe 4y ago

There's still (rural US) markets where 4G isn't reliable. WISPs can do great in those areas yet.

uni_rule 4y ago
I always thought the use case for WISPs was for places that have at best the fiber line built for "a cell tower" but are otherwise cut off from more solid ISPs who want home internet or for places that are best have shitty ADSL. That of course means people in distant nowhere. I never thought of WISPs existing elsewhere as it doesn't make nearly as much sense if you have access to "real" broadband. I suppose this niche was wider at one point?
- cestith 4y ago
  20 years ago, wireless was the only affordable way for us to serve residential customers faster than ISDN or in some cases dialup in a lot of small towns. We could get FR or ATM to a business, but we couldn't make it affordable for most homes.
Arrath 4y ago
Yes, this. There are areas where 4g isn't great, let alone 5g.
vlan0 4y ago
For sure! I drive right through the mountains in the ADK often. Unless you're in a well populated village, there is no cell service at all. Break down on the road and you're walking 10+ miles.
- kotaKat 4y ago
  That also leads to slippery-slope politics with the Adirondack Park Agency as to why cellsite adoption has been so slow and frustrating. Speaking as someone who used to live in Long Lake and had to drive to the edge of the hamlet down at a bridge just to get a single bar to check back in on family, I certainly wish the APA would loosen up a bit more on just letting towers go up.

hocuspocus 4y ago

> all wired competition that wasn’t CATV or fiber That isn't entirely true, G.fast is a pretty decent alternative here, unlimited 4G/5G is too unreliable for a lot of people.

PaulHoule 4y ago
Thanks to unfavorable geography I get no cell phone service where I live. My power lines go through a beaver swamp so conditions are highly unfavorable for FTTH. (The power company does go through every few years in an off-road vehicle to limb up the trees and if we had a realistic commitment to universal service we'd just run fiber everywhere the power lines go and it would be taken care of eventually) I have 2 ADSL2 lines that connect to a fiber node a bit more than a mile away, each gets about 20 Mbps of bandwidth. Spectrum gives a lot more bandwidth for less money just 2.5 miles away, but I really get 100% of what I am paying for almost all of the time so I can't complain too much.
- coryrc 4y ago
  I think it's ridiculous you want massive subsidies for luxury speeds while living in the middle of nowhere.
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    Look at how conservatives would howl if there wasn't a universal mandate for electric power everywhere. I mean, if we weren't entitled to energy from coal we'd have to put up solar panels. Had we really been thinking straight about the "information superhighway" in 1994 we would have just decided it was a function of the electric company and strung an optic fiber along with the power lines and it would have been "least cost". People writing about the future in the 1970s expected we would go straight to fiber without detours into CATV, DSL, spotty, expensive and low-performing wireless systems, etc.
    - mickdeek86 4y ago
      Why did we take the scenic route?

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

> in markets where you had access to unlimited flat-rate 4G. WISPs should be quite safe in the USA, then; data caps are still everywhere. Actually, I had a data cap even on wired fiber, just higher.

selectodude 4y ago
Neither Verizon or T-Mobile's home internet products have data caps. In fact, of the four ISPs my home has access to, Comcast Xfinity is the only one that has a cap.