Mobile Internet Down Under

Anonymous Coward writes "A truck, a sat dish and a sunburnt country. When you absolutely positively need to connect to the Internet, why not carry your own broadband connection with you? One Aussie guy and his wife are doing just that -- packed up the lot and have gone on the road, so far roughly 3000km. He says 'Of course nothing is simple. The salespeople were convinced that I couldn't line up the dish -- it took me about an hour to figure out and now roughly takes about ten minutes each time I set up. They told me that the wireless gear wouldn't talk to the modem, they told me that my Debian workstation wouldn't be supported, they told me that the BOC wouldn't talk to me, they told me that I needed training, they told me that it wasn't done and it wouldn't work, they told me that I'd void my warranty, they told me so many stories..'"

Comments

i can already see his new slogan

[tokaok]

Can you ping me now?

Re:Australia has computers now?

[Jessta]

Yep, We in Australia are totally awesome.
who needs a segway, when you have kangaroos.

Same again

[dat]

Americans seem to forget we have sheep stations bigger than Texas in Australia.

We've got a couple of trailer setups that we use for high-speed video conferencing anywhere in Australia. They're a ruggedised "4wd" trailer with a 1.2m dish and a 12V inverter, hanging off the back of one of the 4wd's. Takes about 10 minutes to setup from parking to surfing anywhere you can see up and north.

It wasn't easy, but the lifestyle is great

[|>>?]

As the guy who is doing the travelling, I figured, what better time to do some karma-whoring than when the story is about you:-)

While it took us a long time to get it all working, the payoff in life-style change was well worth the effort. I just fielded a phone call from a guy in Sydney who couldn't believe that I really existed, that I was in Australia and that he could phone me.

Next I'll be famous :-)

I've gotta admit that my web-site is pretty bare at the moment, you can slashdot it if you like, because it's safely on the wired end of the net - but there is only a placeholder because I keep being asked to explain what it is I did.

You'll notice from the photos that the dish sits on a pretty big frame. That takes about an hour to bolt together - if I do it on my own, all in all 18 bolts, then I get some beefy guys to help me lift the dish on, then plug in all the bits, power it up and on average 10 minutes later I connect - that is if Optus hasn't changed satellites or frequencies without sending me an update first :-(

Over the solar-car challenge during October 18-28, we'll travel down the middle of Australia and the Sungroper team will help me setup the dish every night.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me, or post here, onno at itmaze dot com dot au.
--

Re:Satellite uplinks - aren't they a serious affai

[|>>?]

You are basically correct. My dish is technically an uplink station, but I have no control over power. I can only control aim and polarisation.

Aim is achieved by using a set-top box in install mode, then I maximize the signal. Polarisation is read off a map and adjusted accordingly.

When I get online, I send an email to the BOC to get a cross-poll check done so I don't splat over other people's signal, but I've set it up seven times so far and have yet to get asked to change the polarisation.

The accuracy is waaay less than 1 degree. I could calculate it, but using a 16mm bolt, the difference between connection and not is 1/8 of a bolt-turn.

Re:Australia has computers now?

[ayjay29]

I have an Aussie mate who was on a plane home last year, and sat next to a middle-aged American lady. She was talking about TV, and asked if they have cable in Australia. He said his family had just got their first TV, but that the guy next door was going to get one that showed things in colour instead of black and white.
He then asked the lady what a video was, and she went into a long detailed explanation of how you could set it to record a program when you were out, then come back and watch it later. Much to the amusement of the twenty or so Aussies who were in hearing range of her explanation.