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Wanted - 45 Mile Wireless Broadband?
Slashbaby asks: "I am a net admin for a school division that doesn't have broadband Internet. We are a rural school division, so we don't even have a provider in any of our towns. What I am looking for is a way to get highspeed Internet access into our division through either RF or microwave. There is a city about 45 miles away, (max. distance) that has ISP's that would be willing to sell us bandwidth if we can find a way to get it the 45 miles to the schools."
"What I am looking for is either companies or websites that deal with this kind of technology. I have no idea what to really look for, so any help ideas would be appreciated. Our budget for this project would be ~$125 000 CND ($80 000 USD).
We are currently using Direct PC satellite (which is NOT broadband) Unfortunately, they are dropping us in 2003...they are dropping service for rural communities in order to expand service for government funded projects."
BTW, whats wrong with two way dish ?
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The only problem about 802.11 is its security. I mean all I would need is my laptop, some software and a wireless card and I could read every e-mail or web page visited.
eh, food for thought...
I'd say Fiber
I don't think optical is even remotely possible, even if the school was located on a flat plain.
Granted, fiber is indeed a superior connection. Lets not forget how cheap fiber is these days.
The communication companies know they can't charge much for the connection and for the physical fiber. In order to make a killing profit they must inflate the costs of installation. These costs are currently so high, that unless you are a huge corporation or university with a high demand and budget, optical is not a possibility.
If the school was in a more urban area, this could have been an option. Once fiber is already installed in a general area, it's relatively cheap (even with the phone company over-charge) to hook up to it.
Seeing how this school is located far away from any urban area, I'd say optical (or any wired connection for that matter) is out of the question.
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Why doesn't the local communities get together and form a co-op? The school system would take the lead on this since they would benefit first but the rest of the members would benefit.
If your system is anything like where I grew up, we had small schools for each of the communities. Why not take a room from each of the schools and turn it into the local pop for the service. If you've got a line of sight from each of the schools or could get access to a point where you could relay it, then you wouldn't have to worry about using T1's to connect each of the locations.
The co-op would sell access to the Internet and since they're the only game in town there's no competition.
The school system would get deep discount since they're providing the space and power. But, setup a non-profit to run it and make them responsible.
Of course they'll be some interesting political hurdles to jump but hey that's what makes life so great.
If you live in Virginia there is a state program to get deep discounts called Virginia Link. They did have some really nice pricing on T1s and installation. James
The high school I used to attend had wireless broadband years ago (well probably 5 or 6 years ago anyway).
A little poking around on the net brought me to this site which explains all the details of the install at my school and the other schools in the board. You might want to check out that site for some ideas anyway.
Moderators: I would have rather been moderated -1: Obvious if there were such a thing. I find it really depressing that someone here thought an encrypted tunnel was an insightful solution to the problem of an insecure transit network.
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