What To Do When Broadband is Not An Option?

professorguy writes "I've been on the internet since 1984 (back before email addresses had @'s). But it looks like we're coming to the end of an era. From my home, I have 26.4 kbps dial-up access to the internet (you read that right). Since I am a hospital network administrator, it would be nice to do some stuff remotely when I am on 24/7 call. However, no cable or DSL comes anywhere near my house and because of the particular topography of my property (I'm on a heavily-forested, north-facing hillside), satellite is also not available. Heck, cell phones didn't even work here until January. So far, the technical people I've asked all have the same advice for reasonable connectivity: move. Move out of the house my wife and I built and lived in for 20 years. Has it really come to this? Am I doomed to be an internet refugee? Is this really my only option? Do you have an alternative solution for me?"

Comments

What my uncle did

[Anonymous Coward]

My uncle and a business partner live about 10 miles north of Springfield, MO in a "dead zone" of any sort of high speed internet access outside of satellite (and satellite is a tradeoff due to its enormous ping times). So what he did was get a T1 installed and then erect a 100ft tower to broadcast a 900 MHz signal to the area and then started asking his neighbors if they'd pay $60/mo or whatever for internet access.

They now has 25 subscribers, which should pay off the tower and cover the T1 price in less than 2 years.

The rule to this stuff always is... if you want it and can't get it, chances are that other people want it and can't get it, either. Provide the service, and they'll come.

Of course, if 3G is available (NOT the 2.5G 100 kbps 500+ ms ping junk), then just go with that.

Re:What my uncle did

[cnettel]

Welcome to the world of over-subscription. Exactly how is this different from most DSL providers? (Maybe a tad extreme, but I would bet that the service is good enough most of the time, and most importantly: possibly significantly better latency than dial-up.)

Re:What my uncle did

[mr_mischief]

You wanna know something? People downloaded movies over dial-up, too! Really!!! It just took longer!!!!!

Seriously, I know someone personally who downloaded Lightwave 3D and AutoCAD both over dial-up. You wanna know something else? He wasn't the typical use case for dial-up Internet.

Someone downloading a movie now and then is fairly typical now. Doing it every day is atypical, let alone 24 hours a day every day. One reason it's typical to do so once in a while now is because the time to do it isn't much, much longer than going to the store to rent it. If this T1 equivalent (there was no mention about PRI or DS-1, but I'm pretty sure it's not an actual 25-pair copper wire) is not an acceptable speed to do something, people won't use it for that as much.

One company I worked for had, in 2003 or so, a 250 hour a month limit on dial-up, above which was charged hourly. We decided to do away with it. What percentage of customers do you think _ever_ went over 250 hours once it was free? About 3%. They had the chance to be using bandwidth 672 to 744 hours a month, and about 3% ever used more than 250 hours. A whopping number used far less during an average month. Some of these were people sticking with dial-up despite faster options, so they might represent the less inclined to use the Net anyway. Almost half lived in towns where there was nothing faster than dial-up for less than $80 a month if at all, so those would be heavier dial-up users. Still, 6 or 7 to 1 on ports and 5 to 1 on bandwidth was plenty. Certain customers were online over 500 hours reliably, and almost always moving data. Others averaged those people out.

The thing is, overselling bandwidth isn't a business issue. Having happy customers is a business issue. Having sufficient bandwidth to keep customers happy is an operational issue. If the operations people can't deliver, the price needs to go up, the promises need to go down, or the operations people need to go out the door. You can't really know which is the problem until you look at the build-out costs, maintenance costs, and admin costs associated with lines, routers, firewalls, and servers. If the marketing department over-promises based on good numbers, that's the marketing people's fault. If the company can't produce good numbers, that's the accounting people's fault. If the operations people keep fucking up, that's the operations people's fault. The price being too low could be the fault of accounting, marketing, senior management, the board, or the market and it depends on the company how that really gets set. The delivery of the promised service for the promised price involves three factors, and it only takes adjusting one to make things right. Lower promises, raise prices, or raise delivery. The fact that the competition is unethical, dishonest, and underhanded is not a defense. Yet promising more, delivering less, and hooking people on prices too good to be true is the norm.

I for one know what to expect, and I don't bitch if my bandwidth isn't at its max all the time. I do bitch if it's consistently very much lower, especially since I download in infrequent bursts so I'm not likely to catch most slowdowns. I grab a game here, a new compiler there, and a new OS ISO or four every few weeks. I stream music for a couple of hours sometimes. For the past couple of years, SBC/AT&T has done pretty damn well in my area at delivering what I expect. I'm online and actually at my keyboard probably an average of 10 or so hours a day between home and work, including weekends. I'm probably using more than 1 Mbps maybe 4 hours a week, but when I do I use everything it'll give me, which is usually very close to the rated speed of 6 Mbps if the servers or torrent shares can keep up with it.

People like competition because it lowers prices. Guess what? Too much lower prices mean lower margins, which often means shittier service. It also means that lots of companies fail or sell out because they could be investing that money at a better margin somewhere else, whic

Re:Cell?

[LWATCDR]

Actually He is more likley to have 3G. Why would they install a new tower with old equipment?

Engineer's solution

[Chapter80]

So far, the technical people I've asked all have the same advice for reasonable connectivity: move. Move out of the house my wife and I built and lived in for 20 years. ... Do you have an alternative solution for me?"

Move the hill.

Re:Cell?

[Ilgaz]

It is kind of excuse.

On phone stuff, don't trust Apple. I think your 3G phone/device must be high end so it has 3rd party application support yes? Based on Apple, you will soon get Virused because of 3rd party apps and take down entire USA network! :)

Stuff like these... They even rejected J2ME (Java) while it is in use on billion devices or so.

You know what "risk" 3G and 3rd party official Application support have? Someone could start a better iTunes like store and sell tunes through own Application to iPhone owners.

If you ask electronics people, 3G in fact uses less power to communicate. The "video call" etc. stuff is the battery eater,not the protocol when used for talking or basic Internet access.