Found a nice article by LA Times' Mike Anton describing my situation:

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/C ... T_7535334/ -- Cut Off From a Broadband World

My location isn't quite as backwoods as Darwin, CA is made out to be, but the situation regarding Internet service is pretty much the same situation.

Some points of commentary:


A more appropriate comparison of performance would be, "like that between a bullet train and a handcar."


Unfettered would be nice. But the typical daily allotments (about 100MB per day last I checked) are utterly ridiculous. It does not give one the ability to perform much more than on dial-up (downloading files, video conferencing, and even many script-heavy Web sites). It may make a Wikipedia article load in about 5 seconds -- as opposed to 20+ seconds, as is typical for my connection.

And to put it into perspective -- it is possible, on my dial-up connection, to transfer over twice as much data as is allowed by the daily satellite allotments in the same amount of time. That, my friends, is a ripoff -- especially considering that even a bottom-rung, entry-level satellite broadband account costs $60/mo., not including equipment/setup fees -- and only promises an average speed of about 500-600kbps.


Same here. The two largest mobile providers for this area are Verizon and AT&T. With Verizon, I literally do not get enough signal to allow my 3G dongle to send a packet successfully. AT&T is slightly better, but most of the time you're stuck on EDGE (which is like dial-up, but much more error-prone) -- 3G signal is available in spurts, but about 95% of the time you're lucky to get any data throughput at all, period.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

My local mobile mast gives me four bars of EDGE signal on my phone, and its useless for anything data related. Pages won't load, server connected games refuse to start, updates stall, etc. Absolute rubbish.

First world problems, I know, but it's annoying to have a full signal bar and still no connectivity.

Are there any plans to bring high speed Internet to your area Clint?

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10

Doesn't look that way. I've been bugging AT&T (our landline phone service provider -- the only such company involved in phone service for my area) about it for years. I even harass the technicians who come out here occasionally to fix/check our phone lines about it, but even they won't budge past the "highly doubtful" position.

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What most people don't understand about "enlightenment" is that it is not an end-goal; but where you find yourself just before taking a new "first step."

You need something like the Serval project. A mesh network that isn't controlled by people that are only interested in profit.

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10 PRINT "Bad Monkey ";
20 GOTO 10