(no subject)

[arethinn]

Apparently these guys have contracted with the city of Sunnyvale to install their wifi transmitters on streetlights around the city (starting with a couple square-mile areas at Lawrence and El Camino, and a vaguer location "southwest Sunnyvale near 280" that might barely include my house), and the "franchised" service will be offered at $14.95/mo. Service could be available in November. If this works out, this could solve all our internet problems in this house*. When I read the article in the city newsletter I was heard to remark, "Welcome to the 21st century."

According to my dad, in Philadelphia they are looking into doing this using city money, installing it like the other utilities it is considered a city's duty to provide, such as water and garbage. Of course the actual Internet service businesses want to stop it, for the obvious reason. I don't like the idea of losing any jobs, but then there's a hint of the whole utopian, abolition-of-money-and-materialism, Star-Trek thing in it which is rather appealing...

* - Namely, two or three people contending for dial-up line at once (and of course the suckiness of dial-up); being probably outside DSL service area and the fact that DSL worth having (1.5 Mbps) cost something like $75/mo the last time I checked; and cable requiring removing alterations we've done to improve signal and that whole ugliness about Comcast charging you for each computer if they find out you're splitting your cable connection to multiple computers.

Comments

[twopiearr.livejournal.com]

when was the last time you checked? pervailing rates for 1.5 MBPS in my area has gone from $75/mo to $40/mo around here in the last half year, which is really no different than cable...if it weren't for the fact that you have to get it bundled with local and long distance from a crappy ass phone company we left years ago, i'd have already signed up.

[arethinn]

Eh, probably a year ago, but price isn't the only thing. I am seeing some $45-50 1.5's on DSLreports now that you mention it, but half of them are providers I have no idea who they are and they have no reviews, and others do not inspire me to thoughts of great service (e.g. EarthLink). But with DSL there are also the technical problems - I have doubts the wiring in our house is up to the task, since it was built in 1954-55, and according to the CO locator we are over 15,000 feet from CO. They list the max as 18,000 feet, but in the past when I have plugged our addy and phone # into SBC's locator, they've said DSL was not available where I am, so it's ambiguous. Even if we could get it, we'd lose a lot of throughput to that distance. I dunno if it's reasonable to say it might cut it in half, but in any case it would be a significant drop while still paying the same amount.