I had good luck getting my dad some form of broadband access in rural Oregon using a 3g router (Cradlepoint), a Wilson Electronics signal amp (model 811211), and an outdoor mount high gain antenna. It's not great, but considering the alternatives (33.6k dialup for $60/mo or satellite broadband for $150-$200/mo) it wasn't a bad deal for my dad when you consider that the dialup ISP + dedicated POTS line cost about as much as the 5GB 3G data plan does.
Speed is somewhere between dialup and Uverse or FIOS. I get the sense that it is somewhere in the range of 256 - 512 kbps with high latency (Dad's not one for much in the way of network performance testing). > -----Original Message----- > From: Michael Sokolov [mailto:msoko...@ivan.harhan.org] > Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010 3:35 PM > To: nanog@nanog.org > Subject: Locations with no good Internet (was ISP in Johannesburg) > > Daniel Senie <d...@senie.com> wrote: > > > Better than western Massachusetts, where there's just no connectivity > at = > > all. Even dialup fails to function over crappy lines. > > Hmm. Although I've never been to Western MA and hence have no idea > what > the telecom situation is like over there, I'm certainly aware of quite > a > few places in "first world USA" where DSL is still a fantasy, let alone > fiber. > > As a local example, I have a friend in a rural area of Southern > California who can't get any kind of "high-speed Internet". I've run a > prequal on her address and it tells me she is 31 kft from the CO. The > CO in question has a Covad DSLAM in it, but at 31 kft those rural > residents' options are limited to either IDSL at 144 kbps (not much > point in that) or a T1 starting at ~$700/month. The latter figure is > typically well out of range for the kind of people who live in such > places. > > That got me thinking: ISDN/IDSL and T1 can be extended infinitely far > into the boondocks because those signal formats support repeaters. > What > I'm wondering is how can we do the same thing with SDSL - and I mean > politically rather than technically. The technical part is easy: some > COs already have CLECs in them that serve G.shdsl (I've been told that > NEN does that) and for G.shdsl repeaters are part of the standard > (searching around shows a few vendors making them); in the case of > SDSL/2B1Q (Covad and DSL.net) there is no official support for > repeaters > and hence no major vendors making such, but I can build such a repeater > unofficially. > > The difficulty is with the political part, and that's where I'm seeking > the wisdom of this list. How would one go about sticking a mid-span > repeater into an ILEC-owned 31 kft rural loop? From what I understand > (someone please correct me if I'm wrong!), when a CLEC orders a loop > from an ILEC, if it's for a T1 or IDSL, the CLEC actually orders a T1 > or > ISDN BRI transport from the ILEC rather than a dry pair, and any > mid-span repeaters or HDSLx converters or the like become the > responsibility of the ILEC rather than the CLEC, right? > > So how could one extend this model to provide, say, repeatered G.shdsl > service to far-outlying rural subscribers? Is there some political > process (PUC/FCC/etc) by which an ILEC could be forced to allow a third > party to stick a repeater in the middle of their loop? Or would it > have > to work by way of the ILEC providing a G.shdsl transport service to > CLECs, with the ILEC being responsible for the selection, procurement > and deployment of repeater hardware? And what if the ILEC is not > interested in providing such a service - any PUC/FCC/etc political > process via which they could be forced to cooperate? > > Things get even more complicated in those locations where the CO has a > Covad DSLAM in it serving out SDSL/2B1Q, but no other CLEC serving > G.shdsl. Even if the ILEC were to provide a G.shdsl transport service > with repeaters, it wouldn't help with SDSL/2B1Q. My idea involves > building a gadget in the form factor of a standard mid-span repeater > that would function as a converter from SDSL/2B1Q to G.shdsl: if the > loop calls for one mid-span repeater, stick this gadget in as if it > were that repeater; if the loop calls for 2 or more repeaters, use my > gadget as the first "repeater" and then standard G.shdsl repeaters > after it. But of course this idea is totally dependent on the ability > of a third party to stick these devices in the middle of long rural > loops, perhaps in the place of loading coils which are likely present > on such loops. > > Any ideas? > > MS
