Cities Struggle With Wireless Internet

[HardOCP News]

Apparently plans across the U.S. to blanket cities in cheap, plentiful, high-speed wireless internet access has turned out to be a dud.

Instead, nearly a year after its launch, Lompoc Net is limping along. The central California city of 42,000, surrounded by rolling hills, wineries and flower fields more than 17 miles from the nearest major highway, has only a few hundred subscribers.

 

[EchoMatrix]

I lived there once. It was like $20+ a month for it and you had all these hurdles to go through when connecting.

We just got comcast for $35 a month. A Wired connection...

Maybe this would have worked out in the middle of no where, but this place had all those gadgets and other forms of internet

 

[stabilep]

Another problem could be if you are a DSL subscriber you may be committed to a plan that you are stuck with so some people instead of waiting the many years it took to roll out wireless went with like $19.95/month of DSL service and cannot get out of their agreements yet or see little need to switch at all.

 

[MadJuggla9]

Servicing wireless can be extremely hard for a small company wanting to go mass scale. First you have to know people with towers or something tall to put your AP and dish at. As you slowly grow youll have a bunch of APs across small towns that are WIRELESS, it seems like a headache from the get-go.

As a person that works at a small company that sells wireless internet I can say that it's not cheap or easy. We started off with 1 T1 servicing a few small companies. Now we are at ~350 people 2 years later. Here's a rough summary of how it painstakingly goes (again, we are not a fortune 500 company):

1) See if user is eligible by checking the signal strength at their location manually with a laptop
2) Leave a note letting them know one way or the other
3) Keep all 'surveys' logged in a database to schedule installs if surveys turn out good.
4) Assuming they survey is good, setup an indoor/outdoor antenna that has a strong enough signal to keep them connected running all cables needed
5) Hope that the world is 100% static.

So lets look at a few drawbacks:
It's vulnerable to attack from anywhere there's a signal floating around between and around the APs.
The EU equipment runs ~400-500 bucks (almost 1 year customer use at $40/month to pay off)
Some gear runs 900mhz, 2.4ghz, and 5.8ghz so we cant have interference of signals with phones, other towers, other things in vast general
Every so many months new equipment comes out. This is a headache, now you have to memorize each peice of equipment. Different companies, different frequencies, static vs dynamic IPs, POE adapters, etc when a customer has a problem
Range runs on average about 7 miles before another Tower with an AP is needed.
Demographics with land, season of year, wind, ice, etc all turn a good signal to bad or vice versa giving incosistency in some cases
If something hardware-based fails or needs replacing, or anything new arrives; Get ready to climb a few hundred feet on a tower dangling as you run cables, test switches, and keep from looking down.

After 2 years it's starting to pay off I guess with about 350 people using it. Soon there will be a larger pipe and more and more towers. It's like having wires in the air, every so far there needs to be another AP.

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There is that company that gives you a free wireless router for signing up as long as you broadcast public for a year. I forget the name.

 

[MadJuggla9]

A user's outdoor wireless equipment can get moved by strong wind or people that lie while trying to adjust it themselves, and is a key target for lightning.

 

[snaggletooth]

having wireless internet from bell canada, i don't really see what the big deal is.

WiMax... it's very much akin to cellular phone service. i just set up my wireless modem by a window pointed at the nearest tower and BAM --> 2500kbps down 768kbps up


it just keeps gettin faster too. god bless canada on this, victoria's day.

 

[moetop]

The vendors remain confident despite technical and other problems. Chuck Haas, MetroFi Inc.'s chief executive, said Wi-Fi networks are far cheaper to build than cable and DSL, which is broadband over phone lines

.

How is it cheaper than infrastructure that is already in place typicaly by default? If they are talking about replacing Cable/DSL then why are they deploying it in the middle of cities where copper and fiber infrastructure is already in place (At least that's where they start). It may be cheaper to build from the get go, but If you think you are going to have the same reliability as copper concerning the delivery of data/voice and video you need to think again.

I'm certain they remain confident publicly, because they have everything to loose if it doesn't work out.