Fixed Wireless Transports me Forward to 2005

I must say that this is an exciting day. I now have something resembling real Internet capability.

When I moved here with my dad, all we could get was DSL. If you don’t know what that is, you probably don’t remember what life was like in 1995.

I probably exaggerate, but DSL is a primitive type of Internet connection that works over a phone wire. At peak speeds, it’s terrible. When your neighbors’ kids are all trying to download porn and free MP3’s at the same time, it slows to a crawl, or whatever is beneath a crawl. My top speeds were something like 1.5 MBPS.

Rural Internet providers don’t have a lot of customers per square mile, so there is no money in running serious cables to every house. This is why the Internet is so slow. I guess we should consider ourselves lucky the phone companies are willing to run wires out here.

A somewhat new alternative has become available: fixed wireless. All it means is “cell phone connectivity for your house.” You get a router which is really a cell phone with no screen. It communicates with a local cell phone tower, and you get whatever speed the tower can provide.

For some reason, the big players don’t sell fixed wireless directly here, even though they provide cell service. You can’t call Verizon and tell them you want an Internet connection. Nonetheless, the towers that provide the service belong to real wireless companies. Small companies buy bandwidth from them and resell it. I can choose among towers operated by or for Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. Verizon has a fantastic signal here, but their data cap is pathetic. I would run through it in three days of Youtube. The other companies have true unlimited data. I had to guess which one would give me the best speed when I ordered my plan.

I knew T-Mobile was hopeless here, and I also knew AT&T had a tower down the road, so I rolled the dice with AT&T. Now I have an Internet connection worthy of 2005. It’s not great, but for people who don’t stream porn all day, it’s fast enough. I may look into Sprint.

There used to be some websites I simply could not use except on my phone. They were written badly or something. They took so long to load, they would simply quit. Very annoying. Now I should be able to connect.

The wireless company sent me a router plus a funny-looking directional antenna. I’m supposed to mount it outdoors. I have to figure out where to put it. I know where the tower is. I assume I need to put the antenna as high up as I can, on the side of the house facing the antenna.

It’s very nice to know that if I absolutely had to, I could upload a video to Youtube. Maybe I could even fix things so my security cameras could send me real-time video with a useful level of quality.

I guess I can finally get rid of Centurylink and DSL. That will be great. In addition to the low speed, Centurylink gave me a router which disconnects from my computer for no reason, so when I sit down at the PC every day, I have to go through a routine to make it connect. I look forward to bypassing that mess.

Wow. I may go watch HD cat videos just because I can.