After more than a decade of being on dialup, I finally have broadband! It wasn’t an easy road. I had several close calls and near misses in the past. Sprint’s Wireless DSL came out and tested for service at our old townhouse, but the tree’s blocked line-of-sight. At the new house, we’re more than 30,000 feet from the central office, ruining any chances for normal DSL service. AT&T doesn’t offer Internet Cable service here, and I gave up on them after the second year where they would tell me it was coming ‘next quarter’.
West Waves rode to the rescue upon a silver steed of aluminum mesh. They’re a local wireless provider. I’ve been talking with them on and off for a few months.
When they originally came out and tested the signal, it was clear. I spent a few weeks to check on restrictions for the mesh dish they would need to install on the roof, and by the time they came back to check, some trees between our house and their tower had grown and blocked the signal. Back to the drawing board.
They were trying to get their equipment up on a water tower within a mile of the house, and were hoping to be in place in December. I called to check on their status, and it seemed like they were stuck in the red tape within the local political structure. Hope was waning.
Cut to two nights ago. I was sitting and working on edits for my current Work In Process before writers group when my phone rang. It was Dena. West Waves had called with wonderful news. They were up on a new (different) tower closer to the house. I called them back immediately, and they were out at 9am the next day to test the signal.
It was excellent. Perfect line-of-sight from my roof to their antenna. The installer returned at 5pm with all of the necessary equipment. After a few hours of working on the roof and attic, we moved to the basement and began to set things up. We had to do a bit of tinkering. I had to reconfigure my network and they had to adjust the bridge used to, well, bridge the wireless signal to an ethernet cable.
I’m now online with a solid, reliable connection. The speeds are good (512/128) and there’s very little latency. I’m happy with that.
Congrats! It must be a relief to finally have what you’ve been wanting all this time.
Ironically, the broadband is down right now. It appears that the wireless bridge has failed, and they are coming back to look at it. When it works, it works well. When it doesn’t, well, it doesn’t.