New Hope for Dialup Members?

[Gary_C]

Maybe, just maybe there is hope for rural areas of the country to finally get high speed internet connections.

Government to award stimulus funds for broadband     

Or a pessimist might say it's just another give away for naught. 

[Wudman]

The "Rural Broadband Initiative" (funded by the tobacco settlement money for historic tobacco producing areas) layed fiber optic cables throughout my area a little over a year ago.  I was licking my chops for a high speed connection.  The cable comes down the state highway about 500 feet from my house.  The county has been unable to attract a service provider to hook residents to the line.  It seems that there is not enough population to pay for the individual branch lines.....so, to this point, our government has dumped a bunch of money into a dead project.  But hey, I get to drive over it everyday.

Wudman

[Larry]

10/28/2009
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Commerce is setting aside more than $2 million to map how much of Arkansas has access to broadband - the highspeed connections that bring the Internet to life, allowing people to watch movies and send loads of content over their computers.

How stupid can they get?  We don’t need a map...the service providers already know for the most part who can and who can’t.  The resident also knows who can and who can’t.  What a waste of taxpayer money.

The only way, us in the rural area will have broadband is after the providers make an obscene amount of money from the government.

For years every telephone customer paid a charge each month that went into a black hole at the phone company so they could provide universal service...I think some customers still pay.

[Norm]

I wanted to get dsl at our house but had no need for the land line. The cost was more for just dsl than with the phone line included package so I had a land line put in although we don't have it hooked up.

It is a major source of income for these types of companies. Our universal fee for the company runs around $40 per month.

[SwampDonkey]

Only option we have at the moment is satellite connection. I ain't going there, so I remain a dial-upper.

[stonebroke]

How come this is stimulus money if washington said that the recession is over?

Stonebroke

[SwampDonkey]

Our NB government spent money on broadband twice that I can recall in the last 6 years. We still don't have it outside town limits. It's crazy to, because there are more living outside of the towns and villages than inside. The little village near here might have 400 people. There are at least 50 people per mile outside the village on 10 country roads that lead into the village.

[isawlogs]

  When we lived in Chelsea Qc., the highspeed went from the city south of us to the village north of us and we , in between , had a dial up connection that was as fast a a mouse running backwards uphill . 

[easymoney]

i have been told that most rural areas will not ever get high speed internet from the phone company at least . all some of us can hope for is some new technology to come along. i am using verison air card and it works fairly good most of the time. some friends that have used sattalite say it is not much better than dial up. i guess it is so overloaded. i have a friend that has high speed dsl at his business with a wireless router. i can take my laptop up to his business and sit out in my car and it really flies. in some locations there are some private providers that have put in wireless systems that work like wi-fi and cover a very large area. i have a cousin that is involved with it and say they have a lot of satasfied customers.

[Warbird]

IMO, it's all a bunch of b...ologna.  One of our local Telco's (also cable company) ran a new backhaul fiber to Anchorage last year.  Guess where it runs?  Right across my DRIVEWAY!  They actually cut my driveway to run it.  And they will not service my neighborhood.  Neither will the phone company provide DSL.

It is sooooooooo frustrating.  By trade, I am a tech/network/security guy and to get any form of broadband, I had to have a 40' pole mounted on my roof so I could get a wireless shot to a small ISP in town.  For me, not having a hardwired connection, nor digital cable (for hockey games!!) sucks sooooo bad.

It is to the point, I am about to start gathering signatures from the neighbors and will send a letter to the VP of the phone company.  Probably won't do much good but we'll see.  I am even considering heading down to the local cable company Engineer's office and chat with a couple of those guys.  you know, ask 'em what kind of donuts and coffee they like.

Bleh.  Gov't stimulus broadband package.  Biggest bunch of technological crap I've ever seen.  (Can you feel my bitterness?) 

[johnjbc]

If it was going across my driveway and they wouldn’t provide service I would be sharpening my axe

[Warbird]

They have a right-of-way on my property and I don't want a Federal prison to be my new home.    Believe me, the thought of splicing into their fiber myself crossed my mind but that would be bad, bad mojo.

[Tom]

written complaints to the public service commission, if you have one, will possibly get something done if they begin to accumulate. 

[SwampDonkey]

Is there such a thing as denial of service? Oh, I forgot that's when some hacker attacks the ISP.

[Warbird]

Yeah.  I only use my powers for good. 

[Ianab]

We have the same issues here getting broadband in Rural areas.

Problem is that the ISPs have to put in a DSLAM (DSL Access Module) within a couple of miles of each customer. In a town thats OK, they can hook up 50 or 100 customers and everyones happy, except the ones a couple of miles down the road that dont get service, and the company is not interested in putting in and maintaining an access module for 4 or 5 connections.

A local guy has started up his own service with small wireless access points set up where he can get a DSL or fibre connection from a large ISP and can reach customers in a radius of several miles. The larger companies could set up the same thing, but it's small potatoes to them, so they dont bother.
http://www.primowireless.co.nz/index.php/products-a-services/coverage-areamap

Cellular may be an option, if the companies get the prices down, and if you actuaslly have cellphone coverage.

At my old place we couldn't even get relaible dialup, cellphone was patchy and even the landline phone was dodgy. The Ex got fed up with that and signed up for a 2 way Satellite service. Not the cheapest, or the fastest, but she's happy with it. "Wow, so thats how the Internet is supposed to work". One issue, ice on the dish messes with the connection. We dont get heavy snow, but a good frost can put it out for a while untill the sun comes up and warms things up a bit.

The Govt here is rolling out new fibre backbones all around the country too, but they only go to the towns, even if the line goes past your house, it's useless unless there is an access point. It's like having a water main, unless they put a T and tap there, you ain't getting anything.

Ian

[Larry]

Google has the answer.  Click here to install your very own TiSP kit.

Google TiSP Free Broadband

Most important, remember to wash ones hands after installing your kit.

[GF]

Finally in rural areas around Oklahoma City a company has put in wifi on 18 towers around all sides of OKC and outlying towns.  I tried satellite, broadband cards etc and none worked very good at all.  The hughes satellite I had a month, and took it out and gave it away to someone that had one in case they needed some spare parts.

I am getting wireless from a tower 4 miles away, download is 3mbps and upload is 1.5mbps I have been real happy with the service, the cost  is $54 a month with no contract and no hardware purchase and can cancel at anytime, they also offer voip phone service also.  I hope they eventually do get high speed to outlying areas, its really depressing when you have to use dial-up.

Gary

[DanG]

Jeeze, what a bunch of whiners!  Ten years ago, a good clean dial-up connection was considered a luxury, and many of you didn't have internet access at all.  The spread of broadband access has been nothing short of astounding, and is continuing to grow at an incredible pace.  The problem I see is that everybody wants to be first in line, but nobody wants to pay for it.  Last I heard, it costs about $80,000 to add broadband to an existing fiber-optic terminal.  The phone company isn't going to invest that until they have enough customers to justify it.

[breederman]

Larry,
 

[Ianab]

  Last I heard, it costs about $80,000 to add broadband to an existing fiber-optic terminal.  The phone company isn't going to invest that until they have enough customers to justify it.

Thats exacly right, but they are never going to get enough cutomers (100?) in range in most rural areas.

Thats where the local guy has found his niche, he puts a wireless router on a pole for a couple of thousand and only needs 10 connections to make it pay. The 10 users are probably sharing one 8mb DSL line into his router, but even 1 or 2 mbit is great compared to dialup.

Our town council has floated the idea of putting in low speed wireless internet free for the whole town. Pay extra and get full speed. When the cost is split over the whole town it's much less than what we pay individually. The Telcos will hate it of course.

Ian

[Larry]

Last I heard, it costs about $80,000 to add broadband to an existing fiber-optic terminal.  The phone company isn't going to invest that until they have enough customers to justify it.

It might take almost 2 years for em to get a payback…if they looked at it as cost/subscriber it would be pennies.

Right now my AT&T/Yahoo dialup is not working…because they just let the kiddies at UofA out for Christmas break…and there all on facebook.  Happens when they get a snow day, last day of school, first day of school, and most any other occasion.  I’m on our business PC with an AT&T 3G air card right now.  I bought it because they said I could get on the 3G network…well I can…about 2 minutes every hour than the rest of the time it drops to the 2G network.  So…I’m paying $75 a month for service that doesn’t work as advertised.  The phone company is waiting for a handout from the government.  The PSC could give a flip less about my service because it is a non-tarrifed item.

And Google still has the better idea...TiSP.

[WH_Conley]

Come on Warbird, tell us what you really think.

[D._Frederick]

GF,
What  is the problem with Hughes other than the $~75 per month? I have the same problem, am 3miles away the phone station, too far for DSL.

[clearcut]

I had a Hugesnet (Direct PC Directway) connection for 6 years and as soon as a Wireless ISP established service in my area, I jumped right in and have had excellent service ever since ($40/month). 

What's wrong with a satellite connection.

1. Cost - $80/month for slooooooow uploads and sometimes fast often slow downloads.
2. Latency - the time to send a signal into space, back to the ground, over the intertubes, back into space and back to the ground killed applications that used secure connections, on-line gaming, bittorrent, and video.
3. FAP - Fair Access Policy - if you downloaded too many MB over a short period of time (I think it was 180 MB over 4 hours) , Hughesnet slowed your connection to a crawl. Thoroughly sucks with a major software update.
4. First tier customer service through India that you always had to pass through to get someone who could actually help.
5. When I started with Hughesnet, I had access to streaming music that did not count against the FAP limit and to Usenet groups. Each simply went away one day with no notice from Hughesnet. Only when customers complained did they post a notice that they deleted these services to "improve customer service".
6. Big ugly dish stuck to the roof.
7. Frequent weather related outages.
8. Frequent unexplained outages and slow downs.

[GF]

GF,
What  is the problem with Hughes other than the $~75 per month? I have the same problem, am 3miles away the phone station, too far for DSL.

Problem I ran into with Hughes was it did not support VPN connections such as Cisco VPN's.   Also it was dog slow when going to https sites, http sites were ok, hit an https site and and was like using dialup tried all kinds of different https sites and all were slow.  Also having a teen boy he liked downloading exceeding the Fair Access Policy, they then throttle you down to dial up speeds.  For $80 a month it definitly was not worth what I was getting.


D._Frederick
   I would look into a couple of routers with patch panels and bounce the wireless from a location or friend that has DSL to your house, the patch panels I used are capable of 9 miles one direction with line of site and 18 miles if you have two with line of site.

[trapper]

finally was able to get dsl a couple weeks ago.  now i can watch the videos you guys post.  on  dialup i even skipped most of the pictures

[SwampDonkey]

on  dialup i even skipped most of the pictures

Why? We size them so they don't take for ever to load. 

I can see a photo intense page getting a little slow though.