Wireless Provider Demo tomorrow, 5-15-03

The Web Committee will be hosting a demo of a broadband access provider tomorrow, Thursday 5/15/03 at the Broadlands Visitors Center (next to the gas station).

The broadband provider, VeroLan, will be showing a demonstration of their wireless product and answering any questions.

The meeting begins at 7:30, but new folks are encouraged to show up at 7:00 for chatting and getting to know everyone.

John

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Got Broadband?

 

So, how did the demo go??

 

Well the intense rain (and short notice) kept a lot of people away, so the Tech Committee voted that it was best to redo the demo in two weeks. Beyond that it went great, everything worked as advertised. Even with the sheets of rain coming down they had perfect signal and high speeds. And keep in mind this was at the Visitors Center which is in a low elevation and blocked by trees - it was quite impressive.

More information to come on the reschedule of the demo as I get it.

John

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Got Broadband?

 

so www.verolan.com shows just a place holder claiming to have launched on May 1...you say they had signal strength so they must be live...any more info on pilot or service cost?

Bob Glass

 

Called their office that registered the domain name. They appear to be a Dish network reseller StarBand etc....do you happen to know what their infra-structure is like?

need more data!


Bob Glass

 

Although they have put some information on the site now, we're waiting on a writeup on what they can provide to the Broadlands. And yeah, they are also a Dish reseller. They are working on writing up a bundle Dish/Internet package also.

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Got Broadband?

 

Unfortunately, their price-bandwith are prohibitive.

Bob Glass

 

I agree, those prices are out of range. I can get a dedicated T1, including local loop to my home for $450, or a burstable T1 for $150 (not including local loop). Right now I get 128k up/ 600k down for $54/mo. . The prices they list are not competitive, hopefully they will be able to offer a better group discount for the Broadlands.

DwArFlOrD

 

Where can you get a T1 with local loop for $450? The last quote I got a few months ago was $700 from Atlantech. Their (VeroLan) wireless T1 isn't bad, $450 a month. Was that what you were referring to?

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Got Broadband?

 

I tend to agree that their prices are a bit high. But an even bigger problem that I see are the Monthly Bandwidth Transfer Limits! Even a gig/month(which would cost $150/month) really isn't that much, especially when you take into account streaming video files that a lot more sites are using. I watch these all the time on news sites, cnn, msnbc etc. Just my two cents

As far as the cost of a T1 is concerned, the lowest I have seen is $589/month---can't remember the name of the company right now.

 

The company is megapath. It's $589.95/month and that's for a Full T1, plus install and CPE. Now there may be conditions, but I didn't read the details
http://www.megapath.net

Has anyone thought of doing this as a community? What I mean by that is everyone gets together, puts up the money for circuit and equipment and have a few volunteers to run things. The end user of course pays for their equipment and everyone has Internet access! I know it's a bit more complicated then that, but other places have done it. And from what I can tell there are those on these boards that are smart enough to run it.

Just a thought

 

When we talked to them at the demo, they mentioned that they were not concerned about bandwidth caps so I'm not quite sure what's going on with their new page (especially considering their old page had higher bandwidth caps - over double whats shown now). Anyhow don't take anything there as set in stone, we have not receieved anything back in writing. IMO I'm not interested in any caps no matter what the service is. Saturday I downloaded over 300MB just watching game footage movies on pc.ign.com from E3 in an hour.

John

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Got Broadband?

 

Yeah but they also tack on extra for distance limits, Atlantech was quoted about the same but when they actually ran the distance and gave an actual written quote the bill was jacked up to $700.

Oh and yes we have thought about it. A lot. A whole lot. But when it comes down to it, doing everything from installation to support to collecting money is just something no one wants to do. I sure don't.

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Got Broadband?

 

Sprint
I work for Sprint's dedicated IP backbone & get a small discount . But there are still several wholesalers out there that come very close to that price. And for our usage, a burstable T would be the best option, and there are no download limits. With verolan, I could download the Matix trailer at 100 meg and use up 1/3 of my monthly quota for downloads in 1 file [V], not very beneficial. Here are some informative links that I have found...:

http://www.earthwave.net/
http://www.onelasvegas.com/wireless/VA.html
http://www.usaccess-llc.com/T1.html
http://www.internet-connection-oc3-t3-t1.com/T1-line-connection.html

Im not trying to be a downer, or critical of the new competitor, but like BGLASS stated, the prices are off and they are very limiting to what they offer in terms of traffic allowed and bandwidth. Those prices are not in line with what they offer at this time. May have to wait and see if they can discount, or wait for another vendor to enter the mix.

DwArFlOrD

 

Actually another wireless vendor has contacted us recently stating they are starting up service soon also. We're of course meeting (letting them show a working demo) with anyone that actually has a 'working actually on' signal and passing whatever information along that we can. Anyhow, we'll see how things go.

John

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Got Broadband?

 

John and the rest of the people who have helped coordinate the various wireless providers to come out and give demos I applaud your efforts. But can someone remind me again what the "big picture" goal of this alternative broadband project is?

There seems to be some overall resentment towards Adelphia on this forum. Am I the only one out there who is happy with Adelphia?? The ping times for online games has been at acceptable levels (30-60ms ping times) for the past 6 months. Streaming audio and video files play fine (little or no loss of packets for a 300Kbytes/sec CNN stream). I can't use port 80 to host a website through Adelphia, but I'm sure I could find some place to host my web content for 10 bucks a month (which would be a more reliable solution considering it is hosted in a data center with redundant power and hardware monitoring).

So $65/month for my internet and web hosting needs - $55/month Adelphia "unlimited" down and 128Kbps up (soon to be 256Kbps up) + $10/month web hosting. How is this a bad deal??

I too am not trying to be a downer, but am confused on what the actual problem is we are trying to solve by going wireless.

 

To put it simply, we want as many options as possible for Broadband. Right now it's Adelphia and that's it. We want more options. Adelphia has a monopoly in our area for Broadband. They can, and have been, raising prices to whatever they want. Then you have the slow uploads, no static ips, no running of any server of any kind, etc.

Don't get us wrong, we're as happy as anyone else that Adelphia is here. More competition is always good. Let me ask you this. If a new broadband provider (be it powerline, wireless, fiber) came in and matched Adelphias soon to be 2mb/256k line, but threw in a static IP address and let you do whatever you wanted to with the line but charged $5 less than Adelphia did - how would that be bad?

Myself, I'm fairly happy with Adelphias service right now. For the last few months there has only been a couple outages and speed problems. I just wish they offered more services with the line.

John

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Got Broadband?

 

I would agree that adelphia's service has been fairly good the few months. however, for those that have had the service for longer then the past few months would have to agree that it was well below average. they would have some times, but then it would all go to crap again! I have only had adelphia for about 1 1/2yrs and I have plenty of horror stories. And I know of many more people that have been going through this for longer then I have.
to have another option would be great. It would keep adlphia on their toes!

 

Dont forget, Adelphia guarantees basically nothing! Only BEST EFFORT, well that is so vague that dial-up speeds are apparently acceptable. They may be running fine now, but when an outage comes, expect it to last a while, w/sub-par tech support and continuous finger pointing at your equipment. The upload speeds at 128k, though better than dial-up, are not satisfactory with the modern day needs, we deal in hundreds of megabits now, not 10s of megabits. I too, like John, want to utilize my connection for whatever I need to, running servers, uploading large files, VPN. Most people nowadays use the connection for more than just downloads.....for myself Im looking for 512/512.
Each person's needs are different.


DwArFlOrD

 

Ok, couple of points:

1) If an ISP comes along and can provide guaranteed 2mb down/256k up plus a static IP address for <$50/month I would probably switch from Adelphia.

2) Adelphia has had some horrible service in the past. We all can attest to that and can name numerous horror stories (no cable modem sync, terrible ping times and lag). However within the past 6 months, they have fixed the majority of these problems and I feel have "learned from their mistakes." I think this can be a healthy characteristic to have in an ISP - one that overcomes their network problems.

3) Adelphia does not guarantee any level of bandwidth, but this is what enables them to provide such a low cost service. I agree when you say each person's needs are different, but if I could make a guess, the internet needs for 90-95% of the people in the Broadlands are either dial-up or cable modem just because the costs are so low. These people don't want to pay any more per month just so they can have guaranteed bandwidth - be it traditional wired connection or 802.11x wireless connection.

Maybe this could be a good item to poll the residents - How much are you willing to pay per month for internet service? Or better yet, are you satisfied with your current home connection to the internet?