[FRIAM] The Last Mile, again

Tue Apr 24 00:05:56 EDT 2018

Gary, 

You will be pleased to know that the local group is calling itself, Hinternet. 

They are promising “25/3”, whatever that means.  They said it was the minimum standard for 
“broad band”.   And that was not a variable.  No throttling.  NO time off for bad behavior.  Unlimited access at that speed.  “So”, I asked them, “What happens when everybody starts streaming the Superbowl at once?”  
“No problem.  We have a gig in our pipe and we’ll smoke it” or words to that effect. 

Does anybody know what those words mean? 

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Gary Schiltz
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2018 10:54 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Last Mile, again

Way to go, mosquito infested bog guy! I'd be curious how much "raw bandwidth" ends up costing the group. What speed are they promising each client? Here in the People's Republic of Ecuador, dedicated bandwidth goes for about $10-20 per Mbps. I manage a micro network of 4 households and get 8 Mbps for $120/month ($30 for each household), which so far has been enough to do medium quality streaming of Amazon Prime video. Not great, but then, this is the hinterland.

On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 8:43 PM, Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net <mailto:nickthompson at earthlink.net> > wrote:

Dear friends and relations,  

There is a movement afoot to bring broad band to us here in the mosquito infested bog.  A group of locals is forming a for=profit company to bring internet (25/3) to hundreds of subscribers in our hilly, rural town.  They will put 4 “Radwin” transmitters atop 150 foot towers on two local hill tops with smaller repeaters as necessary.  The transmitters look for all the world like Mac Powerbooks.   Each house will have a waffle sized receiver. The plan for 200 dollar initial buy-in cost and a one hundred dollar per month subscription cost for UNLIMITED service at the advertised rate.  (No “up to”.)  I now pay about a hundred dollars a month for a Verizon jetpack which pays for only ten gigs of data.  To stay within that limit I have to turn off anything that moves on the internet, and go to the local library to get podcasts, movies, or to update software, or do a cloud backup.  

In short, I am enthusiastic about the idea.  What’s wrong with it?  And if nothing is wrong with it, why haven’t  all you Eldorado folks done it already.  Go ahead.  Rain on my parade.   I asked them if they were afraid that Verizon would get religion and put in DSL at the last moment just to put them out of business.   Their response was that  local DSL service is so crappy that it probably wouldn’t make any difference.  They say their real competitor is Elon Musk who is planning a vast satellite service that will light up everyone in the universe

I gather you have all been suffering gale force winds and duststorms.  Ugh.  We, for our part, have had seven snowfalls since we got here. (All minor, but still, relentlessly gray and chilly) The weather broke this weekend and the garden is beginning to be populated.   I hope the equivalent break is happening for you.  

Miss you lots, 

Nick  

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

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