My Broadband ... and rant

I live in the wonderful, rural community of Wynndel, BC, Canada. We're about 12 miles north of the US/Canada border; a few miles south of beautiful Kootenay Lake. If you are into precision: Latitude 49.181614N, Longitude 116.5406W. And, although both cable and ADSL internet connections are available in the nearby community of Creston ... there is nothing resembling broadband connectivity here.

I struggled for many years with a dialup connection. And even went so far as to subscribe to a second telephone line. As you know, all this was less than ideal.

I started a bit of movement here to get someone, anyone to get us high speed. And I totally failed. First of all I pressed our governments and existing ISPs. And we did get a of of promises ... but, no beef.

Finally I gave up ... and helped myself.

I'm now a happy subscriber to Xplornet Satellite. Certainly, this is not a perfect service ... but it beats anything else I can buy. Here's a picture of the dish mounted on the roof, just above my office. (Taken in March/2006 just after installation ... yes, that white stuff is snow.)

In case you are interested, here are a few points about this service:

• With installation and hardware the upfront cost for the system is about $900.00 (Canadian dollars).
• The monthly price for the lowest connection rate is about $55.00.
• The service is "always on". Just like a cable or ADSL connection.
• The data rate is 128bps up and 512bps down. And, I've found that for the most part that this is a true rate. Certainly "just fine" for web browsing, mail, etc. A few speed tests show that I can expect 45 to 55KBs for downloads and 13 KBs for uploading. Assuming the maximum for the 512/128 package would be 64/16KBs that gives me around 80 to 85% for the "up to" rate advertised. It'd be nice to have 100% ... but when the only alternative is a slow dialup I'll not complain too loudly.
• The latency (delay) is a problem if you want to do real-time "shooter" games. My "pings" for remote sites average around 600ms.

I have to add here that some people in our community have a committee and plan to create a wireless service. I wish them well. If you want to read a list of reasons that I'm not involved ... well, here's my rant.

Some Historical Pages

A Short history of how all this came about.

A list of current ISPs who can't or won't give us service.

A number of people and companies I've talked to over the past year. Mostly "good guys".

A list of the various government and quasi-government agencies that I have learned to have no respect for. Caution: a bit of a rant.

Some miscellaneous links which may be useful.

History of these pages.

Check back here often. I'll do my best to keep the information current for so long as there is activity. Mail me if you want tell me how intelligent or stupid I am.