Rural Internet & Cell Phones

ericm979 · Feb 23, 2018

There's already satellite internet with wide coverage. Has been for a long time. For example DISH network covers the entire US. You'll need a sky view to where the satellite is just like with satellite TV. The main drawbacks to satellite internet is that it's very asymmetrical- (high bandwidth download, low upload) and the travel up to the satellite and back down to earth adds a delay. It's mostly noticeable if you're remotely logged into another computer. The typing delay gets annoying.

When I first moved to the mountains 20 years ago I was running web and mail servers from my house and did a lot of remote logging in for work. So I got 56k frame relay instead of satellite. This was back when you could run a web server off 56k as web pages were a lot smaller without tons of javascript. The phone company had five trucks on our road for a week pulling new lines from the local exchange to our place. I got my fixed fee $1k installation's worth on that one. Since then a couple services have popped up to provide radio based internet to our mountains and we switched to one of those.

oosik · Feb 23, 2018

Well - if it weren't for satellites I would not have internet or TV service. My crappy phone service - who cares. When I go out to work on my property - I just have to do it the old way - BE CAREFUL, ALL the time. 36+ years out here and never hurt myself so bad that I couldn't get back to the house.

I've had experience getting emergency services out here - it takes longer than the "golden hour"...............

PILOON · Feb 23, 2018

We are 'up north' which is cottage and retirement area. (only 1 hr close to Montreal).
Beautiful clean environment and pure air.

City consul announced that they were installing WIFI in all the parks!
WHAT? so the youth can breathe fresh air while texting all day?

Guess that's the price today to get the youth outdoors.

kcflhrc · Feb 23, 2018

I'm relatively certain you don't need wifi to text. I will say this though. I install broadband for a living and wifi pacemakers are the new norm. Pretty crazy stuff

bunyip · Feb 23, 2018

kcflhrc said:
I'm relatively certain you don't need wifi to text. I will say this though. I install broadband for a living and wifi pacemakers are the new norm. Pretty crazy stuff

But if it is free it saves your data quota.
Texting annoys me especially customers ahead of me at the hairdresser who have to pull out their phone when it beeps, makes the wait longer and I would put money on it that the message is not even important.
Mine has gone off in my pocket and the hairdressers asks if I am going to take it, I tell him it can wait for which he is grateful as it must impact on his profit margin at the end of the day.

Oaktree · Feb 23, 2018

ericm979 said:
The main drawbacks to satellite internet is that it's very asymmetrical- (high bandwidth download, low upload) and the travel up to the satellite and back down to earth adds a delay. It's mostly noticeable if you're remotely logged into another computer. The typing delay gets annoying..

Isn't most consumer internet asymmetrical? My cable is 15M down, 1 up. I don't know why it's that way unless it's to discourage residential users from web hosting and the like.

You're lucky you can get get remote access programs to run at all. Before I got cable I had Wildblue...the latency was so high and the speed was so low that Teamviewer (which I use to remote-administer clients) would time out before it even connected.

ericm979 · Feb 23, 2018

Yep, consumer internet is pretty much all asymmetrical now. It wasn't that way 20 years ago. Now days people download movies, web pages are super bloated, etc. But few produce anything. If you do you can buy web and email hosting in the cloud so you don't need your own servers.

For the last 25 years wife and I have worked from home a lot when we have regular jobs and all the time when we're self-employed. Good internet has been a must.

rScotty · Feb 24, 2018

I don't think we will be going back to the "good old days" before cell phones became so popular. So somehow the cell coverage has got to improve. Maybe upgrading coverage could be made part of the new public interest in infrastructure improvement.

If so, I'd welcome it. I'd like to have coverage where we are. Yep, right now it does look to me that many are over-using it to the detriment of the rest of their life....but that's the way it is with new toys. Frankly, I'd have loved to have modern communication available to me when I was a kid. Wouldn't have lost touch with so many old friends and classmates that way. I expect the modern generation will have the opposite problem.

Hmmm......with so much computing power, speed, and the cloud available for a storage resource, how about we invent a a "smart phone" that translates between languages in real time?
rScotty

Oaktree · Feb 24, 2018

rScotty said:
I don't think we will be going back to the "good old days" before cell phones became so popular. So somehow the cell coverage has got to improve. Maybe upgrading coverage could be made part of the new public interest in infrastructure improvement.

If so, I'd welcome it. I'd like to have coverage where we are. Yep, right now it does look to me that many are over-using it to the detriment of the rest of their life....but that's the way it is with new toys. Frankly, I'd have loved to have modern communication available to me when I was a kid.

Yeah, cell technology is definitely has 2 sides. Certainly makes life easier if you need to be on call for work, are expecting a call or are on the road a lot. The downside is once it's possible for you to be reached anytime, anywhere it quickly turns into an obligation to be.

As far as coverage improving, that is happening, I'm seeing new towers going up all the time here. I'm sure there are places so thinly populated that there will never be enough ROI to make it worthwhile.