High Speed Internet in the Country, Part 3
In November/December I posted about a company called Cruz Internet in Stony Plain, AB, Canada that provides high speed internet to rural and in-town customers. But there was a catch. There needs to be line of site from the reciever to their tower. I climbed my tower today as requested by Cruz Internet to see if it was possible to see toward their tower and above the tree line in our subdivision. Well, I can see above the trees but about 1/4 mile toward their tower there is a hill with trees and I can't see over that. I don't know exactly where their tower is or how high it is but my guess is it just isn't going to work. I've offered to climb up and do the site test anyway because if you could imagine going from cable high speed to 28.8kbs dial-up, you should be able to visualize my pain. Plus I was hoping to use the VOIP service and get rid of my phone line.
There is another company called Wild Rose Networks that told me they were planning to be in our area within 3 months. However, they do not provide anywhere near the service packages in terms of speed and cost that Cruz Internet provides. Sounds like Cruz Internet is more into providing a good service for a reasonable price. I hope Wild Rose Networks finds the competition sufficient enough to provide a better service than what they have installed in other parts of Alberta.
Well...I can only hope the guy from Cruz Internet does come out and at least let me try a site test. Anyone know of another way to get high speed out in the country at a reasonable price if I can't get the Cruz Internet service?
2 comments:
I imagine you've checked out the satellite options already... If you did go satellite I'd be interested in the results you got with VOIP, because we're about to start a study using desktop videoconferencing for education, and some of the participants will be on satellite. We want to know if the delay it takes to get the signal up to the satellite and back will be long enough to make conversations weird... If you're still not set up by the time we work on it, I'll know a lot more about last/first mile problems in rural Alberta (which you kinda count as) and maybe be able to make some suggestions... but I hope it's solved before that.
I think satellite is too cost prohibitive to make it viable for me. There is a new technology where he has shot the signal through a 1/4 mile of trees and there is great reception. If the tests go well he will be puting that tranmitter on top of his tower and then coming to see if it will work at my place. Line of site is better but it isn't as nessesary with this new transmitter. I would be interested in knowing how your testing goes.
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