Last-Mile Solution For A Rural Land Co-op?

macguys writes "My community consists of about 150 households spread out over several hundred acres in North Florida. We are far enough away from the nearest city that broadband cable and DSL services don't make it here. We're well organized, and used to working together on projects. We have a lot of home based business offices here and high speed access something that many of my neighbors are hungry for. We've looked at projects like http://www.magnoliaroad.net and know that others have addressed the issue with 802.11b/g/etc. There is no big problem getting a T-1 to the community. That part is easy. The hard part is distributing the bandwidth among those here who want to participate. Wireless works in places but in general this land is covered in hardwood and pines and the signal drops off quickly. We have a long history (community is 25 years old) of working together to solve problems. Running copper or coax is not out of the question if we can find a reasonable way of distributing the bandwidth. Any suggestions are welcome."

Comments

If you dig things up.

[oolon]

If you end up digging things up to lay coax, lay fiber as well you don't have to connect it to anything, that way you will have lots of room for expation without having to go back the the ground again. Otherwise you be in the situation cable companies are in of wishing they had layed fiber but coax was cheaper in the short term. Of course if you have cheap labour, you might not care about having to redo things in the future.

James

Re:If you dig things up.

[Blaine Hilton]

Even if you don't run fiber, lay larger conduit that will allow you to "fish" other types of cables through later (even beyond wireless)

Who gets control over the T1?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you say your used to "working together" well then who be in charge of maintaining the T1 connection and equipment? Seems to me any incompetent management of that equipment might invite shotgun wielding neighbors.

Use powerlines

[andrewlong]

Check out http://www.commsdesign.com/story/OEG20030423S0042.

Re:With respect to the T1...

[BuckaBooBob]

Well Thats the thing... DSL/Cable isn't there to replace T1's.. They are lower cost because they are Shared out to offset cost... What do you think they hook DSL/Cable up to?!?! The same stuff T1's do!! Bandwidth has to be paid for... You think just because it gets run through DSL/Cable service the Magic Bandwidth Farie comes by and makes it cheap?! Bandwidth is pretty much a fixed cost(Depending on who is selling it to you and how much they have aswell).. the more you get the cheaper it is... The shorter the local loop the cheaper it gets... Once the data pops out of the DSL/Cable ect equipment do you think it magically appears on the internet?!?! If you can sluff what you are using for Bandwidth off on a shared access medium then do it... But don't put on a big surprize face when they come to shut you down or toss a huge bandwidth bill at you for mis-use of the service.

Rural Last Mile Solution (ReachDSL)

[mikegroovy]

Our Local Teleco (McLoudTeleco.com) recently implemented a nice "last mile" solution for our rural area... They installed a bunch of Paradyne "ReachDSL" DSlams... which require proprietary Paradyne DSL Modems.
Of course this would require the assistance of your Telco provider. Submit a Buisness Plan to them if they are a down to earth Teleco.. if they are a Megacorp, I doubt they'll work with you. :(
DSL is so much better for gaming than High Latency Satellite! (And Way better than Dial-up!)
Snippet from an Informative PDF:
"offering a minimum rate guarantee of 256K at a
distance of 18,000 feet (5.5 km), with typical performance
far exceeding this rate. In fact, astounding distances of up
to 60,000 feet (18 km) have been attained with ReachDSL
products - without the use of repeaters or amplifiers."

Re:Easy

[JWSmythe]

Ah, even the Scientologists deserve connectivity. I hack and serve porn. They regress back to the womb.. We all get our kicks somehow. :)