In Virginia, Delivering Broadband To the Customers Big Telecom Forgot 127
cheezitmike writes "A Washington Post story tells how former automotive engineer Paul Conlin just wanted to get broadband at his rural home in Fauquier County, Virginia, and ended up forming his own wireless ISP: 'Paul Conlin, the proprietor of Blaze Broadband, is not a typical telecom executive. He drives a red pickup and climbs roofs. When customers call tech support, he is the one who answers. Conlin delivers broadband to Fauquier County homes bypassed by Comcast and Verizon, bouncing wireless signals from antennas on barns, silos, water towers and cellphone poles.'"
Wait for it... (Score:5, Funny)
Sued by Comcast and Verizon for "unfair competition" in 3, 2, 1...
Re:Wait for it... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no revenue there. That's why they didn't run expensive stuff. The last mile, when it's rural, is the most expensive. That's why, in the US, there was a tax to subsidize rural phone after it worked for rural electric. Coops are a great idea when the fat cats are distracted by low-hanging fruit.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:4, Insightful)
You are naive. The corps will not pay for the last mile but they will pay lawyers and lobbyists to crush competition. I think it was Pittsburgh that wanted to set up a city run wireless service when the big boys didn't show up to the party. The (mostly Republican) state legislature passed legislation preventing the plan after being bought.... um, I mean bribed.... um, I mean "incentive-ized" by the wireless companies.
That's how the real world works.
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But you are right, I am sure that the big telecoms were thinking of the poor, overtaxed citizens who were not able to vote when they sued to shut it down. That's what corporations are known for, protecting the little man.
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Last miles in cities are a lot different from last miles in broadband. No one wants to do free/cheap wifi in the middle of a city because it's, gasp, not cost effective. Long before the population density got high enough to support wifi, the population density got high enough to support "cheap" cable and DSL (good enough for almost everyone involved), and probably even good 3g (although its not as cheap). No one is stopping companies who can stand on their own from starting up city-wide wifi, but amazing
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If the private sector doesn't want to or can't provide an important service, why should the public sector be locked out? IIRC the city gov't repeatedly tried to interest the private sector, to no avail. This policy has implications since lack of access has impacts on businesses in the city and/or attracting new businesses. Some times the public good needs to be thought of as well. Instead of protecting a few corporations.
But there IS revenue! (Score:2)
There's a local WISP called Digital Path [digitalpath.net] that has gone the wireless route. Just like the guy in the article, they bounce WiFi around the hills with directional antennae and itty-bitty homebrew routers that run some micro-version of Linux on embedded-scale "servers" running on CF drives.
Their focus is on outlying areas... Just East of the California Central Valley is the Sierra Nevada mountains and there are LOTS of customers that really appreciate having a few Mbits connection beamed in at a few hundred buc
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
Verizon sued a local WISP service where I live (very rural southern Indiana), and they lost. That was around 2004. The company now covers the county.
Verizon (now Frontier) put in DSL a few years later.
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Informative)
Already happened in some locales:
Telco wouldn't install fiber network, sued to prevent city from doing so [arstechnica.com] (Another Article: we sue because we care [arstechnica.com])
Louisiana Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Fiber-to-the-Home Plan [lus.org]
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They sued EPB too. EPB prevailed in court, but then the cable companies lobbied to change the laws.
Fortunately for all the 1GBps customers, EPB was grandfathered in.
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Already happened in some locales: Telco wouldn't install fiber network, sued to prevent city from doing so [arstechnica.com] (Another Article: we sue because we care [arstechnica.com])
It seems that Monticello's FTTH initiative [monticellofiber.com] must have succeeded, as they now provide fiber to the home, and with fairly reasonable residential pricing [monticellofiber.com], such as 30/30 Mbps for about $50/month.
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Anyone who provides broadband who isn't Comcast or Verizon gets sued. This is why they can go on charging monopolistic rates. This is why they never have to upgrade service. This is why they're jacking the rates up on existing service that is approaching 10 years old and not upgraded.
or AT&T/Time Warner
Artificial scarcity (Score:4)
He'll figure out just how "expensive" broadband is when the telecoms tie him up in court. That is, if this ISP is large enough to affect the bigwigs.
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Why is this legal?
Having a monopolist sue for unfair competition? Who is the monopolist?
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Why is any regulatory capture legal?
Because 'utility' companies have bribed municipal and federal government for protectionism(IE: preventing society from voluntarily trading with people in the same industry). They have bribed government to restrict our ability to voluntarily associate with each other. They have utility 'rights'.
http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/rae9_2_3.pdf
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How is this legal? The bribery, the protectionism, and most of all suing fair competition? Aren't there any anti-trust laws in the US? In the EU they'd probably get a multi-million dollar fine (10 years later, because the EU moves glacially, but at least it makes the point that it should be illegal).
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Why in gods' names would any telco waste money suing someone that's providing service in an area they aren't? Do you even think before you post, or is it all just knee-jerk reaction for you?
Re:Artificial scarcity (Score:4, Informative)
I'd love to know myself, as it has occurred at least twice. See here [arstechnica.com] and here [arstechnica.com].
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I think the difference here is that this is a private company/individual providing service, not a local government.
So unlike the other cited cases where governments and local authorities want to build out networks, the telcos cant make claims like "taxpayers money shouldn't be used to build broadband"
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Do you even think before you post, or is it all just knee-jerk reaction for you?
Nothing particular came to mind. [arstechnica.com] As you mentioned a minute later:
At least in America, there are no real monopolies to broadband, and this guy proves it. All you naysayers who complain about Comcast or other ISPs need to STFU and GTFO.
You shouldn't brazenly accuse others of something you're obviously prone to.
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That case has nothing to do with this one. It was a broadband provider suing a municipality to stop them from using taxpayers' money (including theirs, since the company paid taxes as did their employees) to build a competitor. So nice try, but it doesn't pass the smell test.
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Why, that's simple. Greed and control.
Now the big question is......
Do you even think (or research anything) before you post, or is it all just knee-jerk reaction for you?
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It's all knee jerk far far right wing wackoness. Look at this little exchange I had with him a bit ago. The best part was when he shut up after realizing what an idiot he was.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2030288&cid=35447450 [slashdot.org]
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No, I "shut up" when I realized you were more interested in partisan finger pointing than in solving any actual problems (you still haven't given any reason why it's so important to focus on who ran up the debt; both major parties ran it up, which anyone who pays attention to the government would know).
And anyone who would call me "far far right wing" hasn't been paying attention to any of my posts.
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Pretty much. Of course, by his own standard, he's just realized what an idiot he is because he didn't respond to my response. So there you go.
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I'll give you another stab at the apple:
I asked who ran up the debt. Please tell me how I said anything about it being 'the other guys fault', and or more seriously 'let us ignore it."
Can you answer that in the context of that discussion?
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OK, genius, go find one instance where this has happened. I'll wait.
The only record of a broadband provider suing a potential competitor was TDS suing a local city to prevent them from launching a competing service using tax dollars. Do I have to spell out for you why that situation is drastically different and not at all comparable?
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By suing the guy they ensure that they will have no competition if they decide to work in the region in a distant future.
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1. If the newcomer gets established in that area, they might expand and start competing in adjacent areas.
and
2. Just because the telco doesn't service that area now doesn't mean they won't in future, and they'd rather not have an incumbent with loyal customers already in place when that happens.
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So that people in areas that do have service would not get the idea that it is cheaper to do it yourself.
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I can think of a couple of reasons
1: If the new upstart is succesfull they (and/or copycats) may spread into areas where the incumbent telcos do offer broadband.
2: Just because a telco doesn't offer broadband in an area doesn't mean they aren't offering service at all. In the absence of broadband there is presumably money to be made from dialup.
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Easy - it prevents them from moving into that market later. (Or more properly, from maximizing their margins when they do move in).
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Have you ever bought anything from someone that produced it face to face? Because it really isn't about how 'expensive' it is, that's a given in the transaction - materials have cost. It's about the 'how much extra is this worth?'.
This guy is looking to make a profit, no doubt, but doing so by providing a service where the big telecoms have said there is no profit to be made. I hope he does well, and I hope he makes his way to NoVA (Northern Virginia) 'cause I'll sign up just to support diversity - even
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I don't know that I'd dump FiOS for a wireless ISP. I could do that now - there's a Clear tower like half a mile from my house. FiOS has been 100% reliable over the 2 years that I've had it here. Not an outage (literally, not one).
I'm a Virginia-barred law
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I'll take the hit for this one... (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our red pickup driving, roof climbing overlords.
-AI
Mesh (Score:3)
We were working on stuff like this using mesh wireless, which would have been a great option for those the big boys leave behind. It was possibly a bit early for its time, although a lot of competition was going for the line-of-sight option. Line-of-sight though isn't so good in many places. When we stopped making them we had a large number of smaller ISPs still interested, but the company was more interested in getting a big name telecom to purchase from us rather than a lot of tiny customers (always the snag, need to make money). What I'm finding interesting now is that in the intervening years it seems like mesh has taken off again.
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LoS can be improved, signals are more stable in inclement conditions, people get more clever with punching the signal through a rainstorm (etc etc)
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Been doing this since 2004 (Score:5, Insightful)
Climb roofs and towers, run cables mount radios, answer tech support phone calls...done it all.
Hard way to make a living, but very grateful customers. Two other WISPs in town could not make it.
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That's excessive, although on track.
The sad, sad truth is that people would rather someone come and save them from "the corporations" rather than even attempt the sort of work the incumbent providers did to offer the service in the first place.
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That's right, everybody just shut up and start your own damned ISP!
It strikes me that this guy can do so precisely because there is no competition. It might work in Fauquier County, VA. But drive a bit east to, say, Arlington and tell me how likely it is that someone there will start their own ISP?
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How does he proof there is no monopoly by running business in an area that's void of competition? If anything, he has unintentionally monopolized the local void.
Re:there are no monopolies (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason this works is the guy can charge a premium ($89 is not cheap for the speed of Internet he is offering, more like 3 times the cost if it was DSL or Cable of the same speed), but he can do it because they have no other option.
His business model works because it is an affluent county without another choice (how many people do you know that will pay $300+ install fee?). It would not work in any market with DSL/cable with costs of $30/month and no install fee/contract (mind you many DSL will try to lock you in with a contract, but you can go without a contract in most cases if you pay $5/mo more, which is what you'll pay when the contract runs out anyway).
I'm not saying what he is offering is bad. It's a great deal for those people with no other choice. But it's not a model the telco/cableco will follow, and it's hardly a good example in the case of the US's dualopoly ISP model.
Even my local WISP, Fire2Wire [fire2wire.com] won't post their prices, because they're not anywhere near competitive. The only reason anyone will get them is because they have no other option but dial-up. I believe they also charge $300+ install fees and prices comparable to BLAZE Wireless (WISP mentioned in the article). Further, WISP speeds are often just barely on par with low-end DSL/cable. Worse still, if your downstream neighbors are hogging the bandwidth, you're pretty much out of luck (QoS could help here, but effectively you're still sharing the "max" that you could get if they were idle).
I know one business which hosts an antennae for the local WISP and they get free Internet. They only use it as a low-end backup, but instead pay for a carrier-grade ISP T1 for their production business needed. They'd never pay for the WISP, and it's only because of the free deal that they have them at all.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even my local WISP, Fire2Wire won't post their prices, because they're not anywhere near competitive. The only reason anyone will get them is because they have no other option but dial-up.
Dial-up and satellite.
Once you've been quoted the prices and speeds of a satellite connection, you'll appreciate what a terrestrial WISP can offer.
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This. I did installs for a wisp for a while...we did $150 installs and $50 - 80 per month plans. That place barely made any money
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The reason this works is the guy can charge a premium ($89 is not cheap for the speed of Internet he is offering, more like 3 times the cost if it was DSL or Cable of the same speed), but he can do it because they have no other option.
I'd suspect there's two other forces at work driving that price up. One, he's likely getting gouged on his broadband costs (and thus has to pass them along to his customers). Two, the whole thing started as hobby work (which means he probably doesn't *want* to be too cheap.)
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Oh, I guess I'll just imagine that I have more than one option in my area, then.
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You do: the local provider, or following this guy's example and creating your own. There, two options, now get to work and quit your bitching.
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Oh, I see. I'll just spend money that I don't have while using knowledge that I don't have to create my own ISP. Be right back.
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You do: the local provider, or following this guy's example and creating your own. There, two options, now get to work and quit your bitching.
So, in what world does "quit your job, borrow a shitload of money and start your own ISP, just so you can get decent internet access" seem reasonable? I'm sure the company would collapse after he got hungry and quit that job so he could go build a McDonald's.
Expensive and old technology (Score:2)
I am a board member of a newly started association that are going to build fiber-optic network in rural Sweden. All members own their real estate and will be members of the association who will own the network. The projected cost for 150 members are around €2500 per connection for building the network and €30 per month and connection for operation (100Mbit with triple-play). The fiber-optic cables will only pass thru real estate owned by the members. I own around 430 acres of forrest so there is a
Finland ? (Score:2)
That is interesting.
I seam to recall that Finland (with a similar low rural population density) was committed to providing broadband for all it's citizens. Has Sweden done the same and/or do you get any other support from the Swedish government?
I would suggest broadband is as important for economic growth as a functioning road/rail network. I'm surprised so few governments are putting up pub
How does one become an ISP? (Score:2)
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One becomes an ISP by leasing a line and sharing it same way you share it in your house. It's a bit more complicated than that, but small ISPs are kinda like the smallest branches of a tree and you are the leaves. They need a trunk to support it.
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How does one become an ISP?
At the simplest level you buy a suitable internet connection (one that allows resale, large numbers of IPs etc) and then resell to customers over some kind of connection.
Beyond this you get into multihoming and requesting your IP blocks directly from the RIR.
WhiteHouse.com (Score:3, Funny)
FTFA:
Fauquier might be 45 miles from the White House, but many residents can't look at WhiteHouse.gov in their homes.
They mean Whitehouse.com, right?
WhiteHouse.com is not a porn site any more (Score:2)
Pity ... it was such a good joke for a long time.
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Yeah, I know it was outdated, but it's still funny if you proxy all your browsing through the internet archive.
Welcome to central Illinois about ten years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm glad to see this guy doing this, but it's not exactly unprecedented. It was done on grain silos, grain elevators, water towers, leased space on other people's towers, and even on flagpoles all over rural Illinois and Missouri a decade ago. I worked for some ISPs that did this and did some of the server consulting work for more than one startup doing this, too. I wasn't the one climbing to do the radio work.
The startup cost for the customer is still pretty high for this sort of thing, usually around $200 to $275. Then it's typically $50 to $70 per month for around 400k to 600k down and 128k up or 256k or 512k symmetric, depending on which company and how far you are from their towers.
Frontier is putting 6Mbps DSL in lots of former Verizon territory in towns as small as 3,000 or 4,000 people. Only the really rural places will need this sort of thing in Frontier's areas soon, and it's much more expensive even with radio equipment to get the people on 80 and 120 acre or even larger plots miles from towns covered. That is, much more expensive compared to using the same radio towers closer in. It's still much cheaper than running new cables to all those customers.
It's not a perfect solution, but when weighed against dialup in the countryside or having to move closer in and change your lifestyle just for decent Internet access, a lot of people who don't prize low latencies and high throughputs as much as your typical Slashdotter will be happy to have it.
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The startup cost for the customer is still pretty high for this sort of thing, usually around $200 to $275. Then it's typically $50 to $70 per month for around 400k to 600k down and 128k up or 256k or 512k symmetric, depending on which company and how far you are from their towers.
Speaking as a relatively happy customer of a local WISP in Lake County, CA [airlinkweb.com] I seem to now get about 1.25Mbps peak for $75/mo. (they have recently bumped up what you get for your money a bit.) Of course at peak time I tend to get about half of that because it's a bit oversubscribed, but they're trying to hang on to existence so it's hard to get upset. It cost me something like $325 for the install, but of course I own the hardware, which is a Mikrotik Routerboard in a nice external enclosure with a PoE inject
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I guess now I know what it's like to feel old.
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There were 6, 10, and even 20 Mbps radios ten years ago, but no home suer was paying for them. If you had a grain elevator or rock quarry out in the rolling country hills an needed a whole office online, it may be worth the cost. I he's getting those speeds to residential users now for anything less than hundreds of dollars a month, then more power to him and I'm thrilled for his customers. We actually cut costs quite a bit by using point-to-point 10 Mbps radios as short backhauls for the customers so we co
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Lookout, "big-wigs" (Score:1)
I have been working technical support for Sony Playstation for several years, and I have actually had the pleasure of speaking to one of his clients for troubleshooting support. From the way he was portrayed in conversation, the big-wigs definitely have something to be afraid of: a caring person willing to help.
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a caring person willing to help.
"Caring and willing to help" doesn't generate the level of profit said big-wigs are after. They'll simply undercut him in a year or two with zero service. Let's see how loyal his customers will be then. They'll run as fast as they can to save 50c a month, while at the same time complaining how local businesses are dying and how horrible their new service is.
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No they will run to get what is probablly a much better connection at a much lower price. Sure the customer service may be better from a local wireless based provider but it's hard to beat fixed connections for reliable high performance service and since the telephone charges are already paying for the wiring the extra charge for DSL can be relatively low and still make decent money for the telco.
So you're saying... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, Virginians, there is a Santa Claus.
Did this up north (Score:2)
Don't regret doing it. There was NO chance of anyone in that area getting connected without our work. But - glad to be free of it.
How about Ad-Hoc? (Score:1)
Is it possible to build a own network in public places with Ad-Hoc what would start living like a Internet until all cells have turned connection off?
What is my idea, is that someone sets WLAN connection ON and others can connect to it and start sharing the connection from own point.
When there is enough users, you end up to situation where you have own dynamic network where every point is just growing the Ad-Hoc network.
And every user could set up a own service (hub like on Diaspora) where to attach informa
Surprise, free market better than government (Score:3)
"We are going to have to solve this problem creatively ourselves. "...fearful the county won't qualify for broadband infrastructure grants...[officials] are pushing to expand homegrown services such as Conlin's."
That's what the free market is all about. Entrepreneurs will provide solutions far cheaper than the government ever could, and create jobs in the process. How about we just eliminate all of those broadband infrastructure grants, and let people like this build their businesses?
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It's not cheaper and it created exactly 1 (one) job. Gov't could have put in cable lines and had FIOS put in creating a lot more than one job, at a much higher speed, for a much lower cost. Yes, taxes would go up, but so would quality of life; and you wouldn't have to rely on just one guy and his truck if something went wrong. What this guy has done is a short-term solution to a long term problem.
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Cheaper than what? Did you read the article? WISPs aren't a panacea, $300 installation per customer and $80 a month for broadband speeds and latencies you'd find a decade ago. And it created maybe two jobs for the county. Having tried something like this on a small scale, it's not a solution that easily attracts investment, and having seen other WISPS operate, it often does not attract much entrepreneurial interest either, it becomes more about helping the community than earning money because the money
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He's offering 10 Mbps. While that was available "a decade ago", sadly it's still quite fast in most of the USA. It's faster than my DSL service, although my DSL includes voice and is cheaper.
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You are not being pragmatic. You are looking at this issue through the "filter" of partisan dogma, and then describing the problem and solution so it creates the fewest conflicts with your filter.
Libertarian principles -only- work if you can get everyone else to play along.
For example, Virginia could be competitive with rural South Korea and rural Japan without government support... IF you could convince rural South Korea and rural Japan to not ask their government to wire them up at high speed. In effect,
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Only if they don't believe in taxing others to fund their broadband. Libertarianism is not a failed ideology just because others are socialist.
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Oh, great. And at the end of the day the moral high ground is unsustainable because your country loses it's economic footing.
Ideology is just an excuse for lack of critical thinking on a per-issue basis.
Too bad they can't do Broadband over Power Lines (Score:1)
Talk about an unbelievable chicken and egg problem, it seems this steps on a lot of toes!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication#Broadband_over_power_line_.28BPL.29
fir the while article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication
Provide very affordable broadband.... (Score:2)
Comcast, Verizon, ATT... all could provide very affordable broadband to small remote communities and individual homes/farms, but as I said C*Os, politicians, and clerics are typically Luddites for profits/perks.
Wave-making technology, economics, social change/innovation is against their personal ethics of greed/avarice...hubris.
Is it 802.16 that might work for US re-motes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.16 [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deployed_WiMAX_networks [wikipedia.org]
http://www.wimaxforum.org/technology/downl [wimaxforum.org]
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The "perfect last mile technology" is in the same boat as Fusion energy. Every few years something "groundbreaking" comes along (first it was private packet radio, then 802.11, power-line data, wireless mesh, wimax/4g, blah blah blah on and on and on. Yet all we see are incremental steps (not nearly enough to keep pace with data demand) and so the cost goes up (as it should.) What a shock, no miracle has happened to grant us all unlimited bandwidth for no upfront or over-time cost. I am so surprised it
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I have worked telecommunications for ~30 years. Yes, last-mile technology is available. No, there is not a conspiracy.
I am saying individual incompetence, greed/avarice... a/o hubris of C*Os, politicians, and clerics are the problem. No conspiracy, Yes individual hubris and greed, well they could just be stupid regurgitators of dogma for the elitist/plutocrats.
Example: "To Big too fail" is still part of US, EU... economics, which will allow another major economic failure within a decade. I suspect, the Bi
I've been in an underserved area (Score:3, Informative)
Meh, Canopy (Score:2)
The Canopy equipment is pricy. Why use it when you can get Ubiquiti NanoStations for $40-$80? Isn't Canopy 10x that price?
Darknet Map (Score:2)
If you are interested in building a distributed mesh, please visit this site and add your location to the map.
http://darknetmap.zone42.ca/ [zone42.ca]
From the site:
Recent events related to net neutrality and censorship have us realizing that the internet is not as resistant to political attack as we had imagined. With the flick of a finger governments can seize domain names without oversight, with concealed effort Internet Service Providers are undermining the neutrality of the Internet.
We are building a mesh network t
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Satellite has data caps and overage charges that make Bell look generous (e.g. 500MB/day, 20GB/month). You're also looking at 1000ms+ latency.