OT: Very Rural High Speed Internet

I say that even though my system is much slower than it was 5 years ago. Mine is especially slow between 5 pm and 9 pm everyday. At 5 am one of Allan's photos would open almost instantly. That alone tells me Ma Bell has got to spend some bucks. They call or e mail every month or so wanting to sell me satalite TV and Internet. I tell them,"Make what I have now work perfect, then we'll talk business. I refuse to buy more from anyone, if what I have now doesn't work.

Gordo

Soooo.... I go internet hunting. I chose to use the Cellular Internet from my Cellular provider (Centennial Wireless). I have a Sierra Wireless AirCard 875U (for USB). Currently Centennial has EDGE in my area that gives me about 230kbps downloads. Which means that web browsing is fairly quick, but not as quick as I has in "town" on Cable or DSL. Right now as I type this I also have a download going at 24 KB/s with 4 of 5 signal bars. The best part, about $46.00 a month with taxes and UNLIMITED use in my local area. I average 2-4 GB of traffic a month. I have got in the car a while the wife drove, surfed the web from Natchitoches, LA to Lafayette, LA (130 miles) with out dropping a signal. Rumor has it that Centennial is upgrading from EDGE to a faster service (HTMA?) that might be over 1 MB/Download for the same price.

My advice if you have a good cell signal in your computing area and want a cheaper alternative to satellite, faster than dial-up, and do not require a full 1 MB+ of bandwith, investigate local Cellular providers. You can also use a provider for Data service that is different than whom you have Cellular Phone service. Go out and shop around and ask MANY questions.

P.S. While typing this, I downloaded a 27.1 MB file in less than 20 minutes.

Charles

I once got a parking ticket, city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, metered parking, and with little time for an appointment. After parking my car, I find out the meter is not working. When I came back, had a ticket. I send a sharp letter off to city hall, pointed out to them I was the business of hiring equipment out by the hour, quite similar to their damn meter. I further stated that if my equipment was broke down it didn't bring in money.

I've tried the same tactics with Ma Bell couple of times, and both times they gave me a credit on my internet. Next one I'm going to try is sending them a bill for my time sitting in front of this screen waiting for something to download. Remember, back when I first got dialup, my daughter would come from the city, surprised at how much faster my dialup was, than her city high speed. That was 1998, I've used her high speed, see little change over the years. The change in dialup is vast by comparrison. Plain and simple the Internet servers have been picking up rural business big time, and not reinvesting a nickel. Way I have it figured, parked in front of this screen, waiting should be worth lawyers fees.

Remember Mike, squeeky wheel gets the grease, just time we started squeeking louder.

Now, getting back to my point, and you were not out in the sticks in the glory days of dialup. If we country folk were worth bothering with back then, may I suggest we are worth spending a bit of capital investment on, now that they have most of us hooked. Shame on Ma Bell, I say.

Good luck.

Heavy, wet snow will make ya cuss yer mama tho. :>(

Allan

• Bird

We are 8 miles from 3 towns so can"t pick up the local wireless, even with a signal booster, from any of them. I work at home and have a choice of 256k or 512k DSL from the local phone coop so I currently have two 512k lines (at $74.95 a pop) and a Verizon cellular USB card ($49.95) for my laptop as I travel alot (and for a backup Internet connection when the DSL goes down).

Do you have problems with moving large files (I move files of 500 gigabyte fairly regularly to FTP sites, etc.)?

Thanks and have a great day!

my 2 cents.

Allan

As for getting internet through a dish, my thoughts on it have always been this- I get my tv through a dish, and every time a heavy rainstorm goes over, it loses signal. Might be for a few minutes, might be for a few hours. So I think it'd be a real pain to have BOTH the tv and the internet go down at the same time.....yeah, I know, it gives a person time to do other stuff, but those rainstorms don't always come through during daylight working hours, and I've read every book in the house multiple times....hate to have to resort to doing dishes or laundry just 'cause it's raining!

We"ve had pretty good luck with sat. tv service, just those thick storms that affect it, usually right when you wanna watch something...but then I don"t watch much tv anyway.