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Earthlink Launches Fixed Wireless ISP Service
rkischuk writes: "As an alternative to cable modem and DSL, Earthlink is launching "High Speed Internet Fixed Wireless Access". You lock a 14" square dish onto your home, and all that comes inside is the network cable that connects directly to your NIC. The connection is transmitted over radio waves, probably to transmitters mounted on local towers. Service seems comparable to DSL in both price ($42.95 / month) and speed (1.5 Mbps downstream, 128 Kbps upstream). No idea on the latency. Service is currently only available for pre-order in the Atlanta area. This seems to finally get the behemoth cable and phone companies from trying to monopolize such services, but brings the wireless providers into the mix (it's probably their cell-phone towers)."
I swear between DirectTv, my FM antenna, Scanner Antenna, and Ham antenna on my roof one, and planes will start trying to land on my road or the FBI is going to show up and ask some pointed question about the last Bin Ladin Radio Tranmission.
Read my plight before you hurt me moderators.
Around january or so I was looking for a good deal on DSL. I called around everywhere, pacbell kept insisting that I wasn't in a coverage area for POTS service DSL. I kept calling every ISP I could until I got in touch with sprint...
Now here is where it get's hazy.
The sales rep at sprint told me THIS WAS DSL. I repeadedly asked him because I knew about the sprint wireless service and he assured me that it was DSL. I asked him 7 or 8 times at least. I went ahead and authorized the service tech to come out and install it. My retired neighbor was gonna let him into the house to do the work.
When I got home that night a small crowd of about 4 or 5 neighbors were out in front of my house pointing at my roof and talking about something. I got out of the car and low and behold THERE WAS A FRIGGEN 15FOOT TOWER ON MY ROOF!!! The sales guy had obviously lied to me, I was really ticked off.
I figured I would give it a try before I canceled it. It sucked horribly compared to a real wired connection. I called my salesguy back and ripped on him, then I asked to be transferred to his manager and ripped on him for a while. I reminded them that the winter season was approaching and if there was a single leak in my roof I would sue for something, let the lawer figure out what it is.
That night, around 8pm they had another tech on the roof removing the equipment. A week later pacbell changed their tune and I got my DSL self install kit and was up and running.
Considering sprint's track record with long distance slamming, this did not surprise me in the slightest. If I controlled every geek on slashdot I would make them NOT buy anything sprint because they basically slammed me, and falsely represented their product. Since I don't control the geeks, maybe they'll just read what I just said and make their own good choice.
Where I live, DSL is out of reach, and SWBell has no timetable to extend it. Cable modem is being "tested" in our area, but not in wide use. And the quality of the phone lines themselves is such that I was lucky to get much above 28.8. SO, in steps Nucentrix, a wireless microwave ISP here in the Austin area. For about $70/month, I get a 354Kb/s download (actually bursts well above that) and a 128Kb/s upload. If I wanted it, for about $230/month I could have T1 speeds.
Upside: Latency is tiny (nothing like those satellite wireless solutions) and the speed is great. Works fine in good weather and bad, and I'm even a good 20 miles from the tower.
Downside: more expensive than DSL/Cable, is only available if you have line of site to their antennas, and requires installation of a truly ugly antenna on/near your house (in my case, 30 feet tall). It's hideous. It looks like we're aiming a deathray at Austin.
Nucentrix was originally providing cable TV via microwave to rural areas for years, and have now added what is basically a cable modem to the end of a microwave antenna. The product is going to be a niche... I don't see these deathray antennas popping up on every house. But for folks with my combination of problems, Nucentrix makes a great solution.
[this is kind of a repost of comments when we discussed this last Dec 6...]