WISPS Mean Cable and DSL Aren't the Only Choices 256
Brett Glass writes "Feel like you're stuck with a no-win choice between expensive cable modem service and slow DSL for Internet? Currently using satellite, with long latencies that make it impossible to do VoIP or interactive gaming? One of America's best kept secrets, so it seems, is the wide coverage of WISPs — terrestrial (not satellite or cellular) wireless broadband Internet providers. The linked article gives an overview of WISPs and provides a handy map showing their nationwide coverage (more than 750,000 square miles of the continental US — and only about one third of the WISPs in the US are on the map so far). Most WISPs are small, independent, consumer-friendly, and tech savvy, making them a better choice than big, corporate ISPs who can't even tell a penny from a dollar."
They work well too (Score:4, Interesting)
*rubs hands together* (Score:5, Interesting)
I look forward to the day when I can tell the incumbent cable provider (Rogers Cable) here in Canada to go fuck themselves with a chainsaw.
Them and their, "we're upping your price for the second time this year", and "you're on our do-not-market-to list, but we'll just send you all sorts of spam and upgrade offers along with the semi-annual price increase letter!", and their overall scummy existence.
Re:Dad has that service (Score:3, Interesting)
Worst map ever (Score:3, Interesting)
Which WISPs serve my coverage area? Is it even more than one?
Re:Price and Speed suck (Score:3, Interesting)
Fortunately, ATT just installed a DSL substation across the street from me (I was formerly 18000 ft from central office) and now I can get their minimal package 1.5/0.5 for $15/mo.
Re:They work well too (Score:3, Interesting)
It must be nice to have such cheap internet. I happen to live in the only state shown with no WISP coverage. High speed internet links here are ridiculous.
I have two options:
1) AT&T (formerly BellSouth). If you have a land line you can get 768k/128k for $19.99/month, but you must have a land line which adds another $15+/month. Naked DSL is available, but the cheapest price is $34.95/month for 1.5M/256k.
2) Charter cable offers internet by itself. Their minimum advertised speed is 5M. The price is almost $60/month or $54.99 if you also have cable.
I don't need 10M+ speeds, but it is nice to have if I watch streaming video or other things requiring greater bandwidths. I do not download music and movies illegally, but I do grab iso images of Linux discs regularly. 1.5M would be slow, but meet my needs. Problem is it is $35+/month. I would love to have a WISP available. I live less than 2 miles from a mountain that could service a large city if there was a WISP. I would switch if I had the choice.
Cheers,
the_crowbar
Re:The WISP's in my area.... (Score:2, Interesting)
My building has a deal with a WISP. Free internet in the lobby and a pair of APs on each floor above for subscribers. Off peak hours are OK and it's cheap, but generally too congested to stream video or game on. Also, If you download more than 2GB they drop your speed to 128K for the rest of the month.
Lastly, they require a periodic web based login to use the service, so even though I bridged in my LAN to their AP, computers on my LAN often failed to perform late night updates and automated functions, which was too annoying to put up with.
The way they have it set up, it's only a little better than dialup.
Re:They work well too (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"Nationwide coverage" (Score:4, Interesting)
As for coverage: WISPs cover more of the area of the US than cable modem and DSL combined; we also serve more of the population. And we're growing as fast as we can to cover more. But most WISPs are self-financed and not public companies, so folks have to know about us and patronize us before we can build out.
Wisp experience in quebec (Score:2, Interesting)
As someone who worked in a WISP (Score:3, Interesting)
We only did good in areas without DSL. If you couldn't get anything else, wireless is far better than a satellite.
However, if an area we serviced suddenly got DSL, we lost most of our customers in that area.
And let me tell you, DSL is only going to grow.
Also, a WISP usually gets its bandwidth from the same phone company that has DSL in an area. So the phone company wins either way.
It is VERY hard to compete against a phone company.
Users switching from DSL to WISPs (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the things that WISPs do is enable people to "cut the cord."
Re:The WISP's in my area.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Well like I said, the only open AP is in the lobby and while it might get overused, I wasn't using it. Each floor of the building (with ~10 residences per story) has 2 APs that only work for subscribers. Also, each floor provides decent shielding for each AP. I can generally only see APs on the floor above me and the one below in a site scan. So each AP during peak usage might have 5-10 people on it, but it's probably more like 1-2. During peak evening hours the total number of users on the 64 subscriber-only APs in the tower is probably only in the range of 100 systems, as most people are using comcast or AT&T.
It is more likely therefor that the wisp is greatly oversold. Hop 4 on a tracert gives adsl-072-151-107-241.sip.asm.bellsouth.net
Looks to me like they're trying to spread a commercial DSL line a little too thin.
So the analog isn't "me plugging too many things in", it's "me and my neighbors get a brownout when our ACs kick on at the same time".