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In Virginia, Delivering Broadband To the Customers Big Telecom Forgot
cheezitmike writes "A Washington Post story tells how former automotive engineer Paul Conlin just wanted to get broadband at his rural home in Fauquier County, Virginia, and ended up forming his own wireless ISP: 'Paul Conlin, the proprietor of Blaze Broadband, is not a typical telecom executive. He drives a red pickup and climbs roofs. When customers call tech support, he is the one who answers. Conlin delivers broadband to Fauquier County homes bypassed by Comcast and Verizon, bouncing wireless signals from antennas on barns, silos, water towers and cellphone poles.'"
Sued by Comcast and Verizon for "unfair competition" in 3, 2, 1...
He'll figure out just how "expensive" broadband is when the telecoms tie him up in court. That is, if this ISP is large enough to affect the bigwigs.
I, for one, welcome our red pickup driving, roof climbing overlords.
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
We were working on stuff like this using mesh wireless, which would have been a great option for those the big boys leave behind. It was possibly a bit early for its time, although a lot of competition was going for the line-of-sight option. Line-of-sight though isn't so good in many places. When we stopped making them we had a large number of smaller ISPs still interested, but the company was more interested in getting a big name telecom to purchase from us rather than a lot of tiny customers (always the snag, need to make money). What I'm finding interesting now is that in the intervening years it seems like mesh has taken off again.
Climb roofs and towers, run cables mount radios, answer tech support phone calls...done it all.
Hard way to make a living, but very grateful customers. Two other WISPs in town could not make it.
At least in America, there are no real monopolies to broadband, and this guy proves it. All you naysayers who complain about Comcast or other ISPs need to STFU and GTFO.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I am a board member of a newly started association that are going to build fiber-optic network in rural Sweden. All members own their real estate and will be members of the association who will own the network. The projected cost for 150 members are around €2500 per connection for building the network and €30 per month and connection for operation (100Mbit with triple-play). The fiber-optic cables will only pass thru real estate owned by the members. I own around 430 acres of forrest so there is a long way between each house/real estate/member. Our website www.sodrakindsfiber.se is only in swedish.
Don't you have to have physical access to a router or something? Also: Google said it was going to roll out 1 GB/S out in select locations. But I haven't heard anything further. I've chosen my place of residence based on high speed internet before, I might move again if I can get in to 1 GB/S Internet. That could be good for writing next generation video game P2P protocols. I have a theory on how to make 1 million players at the same time Fighter like Tekken with 1 GB/S Internet. I have the game and the protocol written right now, but I don't have all the moves for every fighter done, and I have no artists to do modeling. You can play 10 players at the same time, just one fighter,sorta boring, but if I had the tech to see it realized, I may put in the extra 3 months to finish it.
God spoke to me.
FTFA:
Fauquier might be 45 miles from the White House, but many residents can't look at WhiteHouse.gov in their homes.
They mean Whitehouse.com, right?
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I'm glad to see this guy doing this, but it's not exactly unprecedented. It was done on grain silos, grain elevators, water towers, leased space on other people's towers, and even on flagpoles all over rural Illinois and Missouri a decade ago. I worked for some ISPs that did this and did some of the server consulting work for more than one startup doing this, too. I wasn't the one climbing to do the radio work.
The startup cost for the customer is still pretty high for this sort of thing, usually around $200 to $275. Then it's typically $50 to $70 per month for around 400k to 600k down and 128k up or 256k or 512k symmetric, depending on which company and how far you are from their towers.
Frontier is putting 6Mbps DSL in lots of former Verizon territory in towns as small as 3,000 or 4,000 people. Only the really rural places will need this sort of thing in Frontier's areas soon, and it's much more expensive even with radio equipment to get the people on 80 and 120 acre or even larger plots miles from towns covered. That is, much more expensive compared to using the same radio towers closer in. It's still much cheaper than running new cables to all those customers.
It's not a perfect solution, but when weighed against dialup in the countryside or having to move closer in and change your lifestyle just for decent Internet access, a lot of people who don't prize low latencies and high throughputs as much as your typical Slashdotter will be happy to have it.
I have been working technical support for Sony Playstation for several years, and I have actually had the pleasure of speaking to one of his clients for troubleshooting support. From the way he was portrayed in conversation, the big-wigs definitely have something to be afraid of: a caring person willing to help.
Yes, Virginians, there is a Santa Claus.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Recently, sold to one of the bigger boys. It was ... too much work, really. (bunch of "entitled" folks in community made life difficult)
Don't regret doing it. There was NO chance of anyone in that area getting connected without our work. But - glad to be free of it.
Is it possible to build a own network in public places with Ad-Hoc what would start living like a Internet until all cells have turned connection off?
What is my idea, is that someone sets WLAN connection ON and others can connect to it and start sharing the connection from own point.
When there is enough users, you end up to situation where you have own dynamic network where every point is just growing the Ad-Hoc network.
And every user could set up a own service (hub like on Diaspora) where to attach information.
The basic idea is that there would be a global CHAT channel for everyone (using IRC) where everyone could be.
And when the government, ISP or the nature turns off the Internet, citizens can build own wireless network and share information, discuss and offer even own basic services.
The services could not be any typical HTTP/FTP servers but very simple small ones. Size of the twitter. Send just photos, videos and share map (OpenStreetMap). So no ZIP files, no EXE files, no documents and other. (yes, you could write a virus for JPG, MPEG and many other data files).
It would be a massive network on areas where are lots of people. Almost every smartphone sold now has a WLAN connection possibilities. It is true mobile a network coverage extender. Laptops and desktop computers acting more like a permanent nodes.
As it just sounds so stupid that even today, we can not easily build up a own network to share data on smaller areas (like 1x1km area where is 7-10 house and WLAN can connect every house) without going trough internet or other permanent connection. Think about where small town could build own network without routing trough Internet or placing permanent WLAN networking. How about schools where kids could make own network and pass the whole school network to share data?
As far I know currently it is impossible to connect and share (bounce) a WLAN connection on cellphones and even setups what could be technically possible, are just too hard to do for normal users. As it should be just to be so easy, user scans networks and see the number of nodes on it and connects to wanted and can already find data.
"We are going to have to solve this problem creatively ourselves. "...fearful the county won't qualify for broadband infrastructure grants...[officials] are pushing to expand homegrown services such as Conlin's."
That's what the free market is all about. Entrepreneurs will provide solutions far cheaper than the government ever could, and create jobs in the process. How about we just eliminate all of those broadband infrastructure grants, and let people like this build their businesses?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Talk about an unbelievable chicken and egg problem, it seems this steps on a lot of toes!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication#Broadband_over_power_line_.28BPL.29
fir the while article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication
"I am a board member of a newly started association that are going to build fiber-optic network in rural Sweden."
That is interesting.
I seam to recall that Finland (with a similar low rural population density) was committed to providing broadband for all it's citizens. Has Sweden done the same and/or do you get any other support from the Swedish government?
I would suggest broadband is as important for economic growth as a functioning road/rail network. I'm surprised so few governments are putting up public money where appropriate.
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
Comcast, Verizon, ATT... all could provide very affordable broadband to small remote communities and individual homes/farms, but as I said C*Os, politicians, and clerics are typically Luddites for profits/perks.
Wave-making technology, economics, social change/innovation is against their personal ethics of greed/avarice...hubris.
Is it 802.16 that might work for US re-motes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.16
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deployed_WiMAX_networks
http://www.wimaxforum.org/technology/downloads/WiMAXNLOSgeneral-versionaug04.pdf
Antenna Towers
http://www.cellularmaps.com/3g_compare.shtml
Telecommunications Multi-Function Platform
http://www.worldskycat.com/markets/skycom.html
When industry/C*Os fails to work, act responsibly, and/or blocks innovation, then governance must demand and do for US!
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I live on a pond with 6 houses on the side of the pond I live on. Because there were so few houses, it was never economical to improve service. We never had cable. When I was a work at home programmer, we originally went with ISDN, and later T-1. Being a regulated service, the phone company has to provide it to anywhere they string wires, but it is not cheap. I recall it was an $1,800 installation cost just to prep the wires. After I parted company with Red Hat, we paid for it on our own ($400/month), but when the T-1 provider jumped the price to $700/month, we finally bailed. Fortunately, when we dropped the T-1, the lake had gotten a cell phone tower (that in fact helps pay for some of the lake improvements), and we were able to switch to cell phone networking for casual use. I did have to watch the bandwidth carefully, and not update my photo album from home in order to stay under the 5g limit Sprint charged. About 6 months after we switched to cell phone networking, one of the two towns that the lake straddles was getting Verizon FIOS, and fortunately that town government required the phone company to make FIOS to every house in town, even the houses on the ponds where access was more difficult. So all of us got FIOS. It would be nice the other town (the one I live in) would sign the paperwork so that I can get TV over FIOS to allow me to turn off my DISH TV satellite service.
Pity ... it was such a good joke for a long time.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Blaze is not in business to compete with existing providers. I contacted them because I was fed up with Comcast and they were up front and explained that they could provide me service but at a higher cost and more than likely lower speed then I get with Comcast. They are just trying to extend a service to the minority of folks in this area that Comcast and Verizon have deemed not profitable enough to serve.
... lived out there. Her solution was satellite internet. I am not sure if it was more or less expensive than this would be. Also she depended on the IT staff to keep her system running and quite a bit of effort was required to keep it going. I don't work there any more so I have no recent details.
We've got a guy doing much the same in our area (SE Michigan). I think he's got 4 sites now, one of them on a water tower. Basic service is ~$30.00 a month, I know of one small business using it, while there are occasional signal issues (they are in a hilly wooded area) the rest of the time of flies. I wish the FCC would free up a few of the decent frequencies for not licensed communications usage, if people could set up a simple, ad hoc communications relay on top of their house, barn, silo, or tower rural wireless broadband would get a big boost. While you would still need an ISP the real problem is the "last mile" gap, if all an ISP had to do to get a couple dozen more customers was put a couple hundred dollar relay on their roof and plug a Ethernet cable from it into their network I imagine they'd do it in a heartbeat. There might be a few isolated issues real world (long daisy chain of users, one close to the ISP takes down their relay, everyone down the chain looses connection), but nothing the market couldn't solve (ISP/Users rent a site to put up their own relay to reconnect the chain)
I live in Fauquier county but we are "fortunate" enough to have a fast (most of the time) Comcast cable internet connection. However, a couple of days ago I received an email fowarded from a neighbor from a guy who lives across the street from our development. The development I live in is about 40 houses on larger properties. Across the street are mostly farms. The guy living across the street did not have a wired internet connection and emailed us asking what we have here. He had thought that Verizon was installing FiOS nearby (they're not) as his wireless signal is weak and he wanted something more reliable. In the end, he is considering Blaze Broadband since Comcast will charge outrageous fees to bring the line to his house.
Fauquier county in general is a very "self reliant" community. A lot of people that live here are in the local foods movement and are all about neighbors helping neighbors. My wife and I recently bought a quarter cow of beef from a local farm, we have our own vegetable garden, I brew my own beer and one of the state's top wineries is in walking distance. The mayor of Warrenton is also pushing an initiative to create electricity from the county landfill. If someone can't get a service from one of the giant service corporations, someone here will pick up the slack, as shown in the WaPo article.
Back in high school in our computer class we were doing some internet search exercises and the teacher accidentally slipped up and told us to go to whitehouse.com (ah, the days before internet filters). The outbreak of snickers caused her to realize her mistake and promptly started loudly saying "Whitehouse.gov, Whitehouse.gov!!!!". It was too late though and over half of the students eyes were sullied with what I believe was the sight of Mr/Mrs Clinton lookalikes dressed in Bondage leather & chains.
There's a local WISP called Digital Path that has gone the wireless route. Just like the guy in the article, they bounce WiFi around the hills with directional antennae and itty-bitty homebrew routers that run some micro-version of Linux on embedded-scale "servers" running on CF drives.
Their focus is on outlying areas... Just East of the California Central Valley is the Sierra Nevada mountains and there are LOTS of customers that really appreciate having a few Mbits connection beamed in at a few hundred bucks/month.
They seem to be doing pretty well for themselves.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The Canopy equipment is pricy. Why use it when you can get Ubiquiti NanoStations for $40-$80? Isn't Canopy 10x that price?
If you are interested in building a distributed mesh, please visit this site and add your location to the map.
http://darknetmap.zone42.ca/
From the site:
Recent events related to net neutrality and censorship have us realizing that the internet is not as resistant to political attack as we had imagined. With the flick of a finger governments can seize domain names without oversight, with concealed effort Internet Service Providers are undermining the neutrality of the Internet.
We are building a mesh network that will do away with censorship, ISP conflicts-of-interest, and 'last mile' duopolies. Affordable technology to do so already exists, but the main hurdle is finding nearby individuals interested in participating.
This map solves this issue. Place a marker on the map to indicate your approximate location (for privacy reasons.) The areas will be attached to an e-mail address so that others nearby will be able to communicate with you (through an anonymous form — your address will remain secrets.)
The goal is not to build a wide-area mesh network overnight, but rather get nearby geeks to experiment with mesh technologies, in the hopes that more will join later.
Even with the latest round of Recovery funding providing tens of millions of dollars for infrastructure upgrades, many people in my community will still not be able to acquire high-speed Internet access without erecting towers and pulling 10+ mile links. This idea that every rural person can connect to a single wireless AP on some remote mountain top is flawed. While everyone has LOS looking UP, there still aren't any practical aerostats and satellites are too far away (latency is atrocious) and a bottleneck.
What I would like to see is a community, last-mile mesh network. Anyone who wants to connect CAN, for FREE, and every new node extends the network. This provides a foundation to transport traffic to ISPs who can provide gateways to the wider Internet. But traffic destined for your neighbor, or your relative a couple miles away doesn't need to flow through any kind of centralized network or ISP; it flows a few hops over the mesh and is delivered! Currently, if you use one ISP and your neighbor uses another, that traffic is flowing through your ISP, through some peering arrangement between the ISPs, and back down to your neighbor. Talk about inefficient! What a waste.
Let's free the Internet. Let's reduce the load on ISPs. We can eliminate central planning and central snooping and gain higher-speed connectivity to the people in our region. This is the unfulfilled promise of ubiquitous networking. We need mobile ad-hoc networking and we need it now.
Is that pronounced "faux-queer"?
Paul is just one of an estimated 2500-3000 WISPs who offer service across the United States. Many have been meeting the needs of rural areas and suburban areas that the ILECs and Cable Companies have ignored. A map of WISPA Members can be viewed at http://www.wispa.org/?page_id=170. These networks vary in size from small local communities to networks that cover parts of multiple states. If you are in an area that cannot get broadband today, locate a WISP on the map in your vicinity and ask if they cover your area or can build into your area fairly soon.
As with any other business, a strong business case makes these decisions much easier for the business owner. Aggregating a housing addition and offering to pay $100 more on the installation for 20 homes would often tip the scales with the provider on whether he invests in that community or another one down the road or across the county. If everyone pitches in a little, a lot can be accomplished.
The technology of Fixed Wireless Equipment has improved dramatically over the last ten years and the price of equipment continues to decrease. One of the largest obstacles a WISP has is the lack of spectrum to operate in. There are laws on the books the prevent the FCC from allocating spectrum without going through an auction process or declaring it unlicensed. This prevents most WISPs from purchasing spectrum as the large players will pay enormous prices for it and then let it lay fallow or build out very slowly. It is a great misuse of our nations spectrum assets.
It always burns me when I see the highly subsidized telephone companies use these taxpayer funded subsidies to buy spectrum to prevent competition. It happens all the time. Its time for a change. Three cheers for the WISP entrepreneurs that spend their own capital and energy to provide Broadband to their communities while the subsidized megacorps wine and dine the politicians on taxpayer funds.