anyone else losing their internet service?

[agchat]

WBB is wireless broadband which is what
saskparty is axing. Hopper from what i can see,
if you are paying 60 a month you should be
getting 3000 download and 500 upload from
xplorenet. 1500 and 250 is 55a month.

[oneoff]

Larry: I knew that was going to be said when I mentioned "toes".

Just for clarification, there are "burst" speeds which last for relatively short periods of time and then you get throttled back to much lower "sustained" speeds on most carriers and most plans. You typically pay more much more for upgrades to higher "burst" or "sustained" speeds. Consider the short period of time to conduct a speed test before jumping to the conclusion that you are measuring sustained speeds.

There's another measure of bandwidth quality that is very important for many internet uses. That is called "latency" and satellite internet is notoriously bad because 22,000 miles (maybe both ways for all I know) takes time to travel, even at the speed of light. And you will notice that built in delay on any internet telephone application, online gaming and any "real time" or "time sensitive" application. Its in the order of about 800ms. from the reports I've seen. That most of a full second delay.

And as for tv working fine so why wouldn't internet traffic be just as fantastic. Well if you were satisfied to visit the same site, or watch the same movie at the same time as everyone else on the internet; then sure it would. And Tv signals are one way traffic; where there is always lots of replies and data you want to transmit as well as receive with an internet connection. In summary; satellite internet will always be relatively costly (or even prohibatively costly); and probably never able to keep up with the exploding demand. Its a fine last choice.

And satellites providers are like airlines. They over subscribe and don't have the capacity to meet demands during peak periods.

Extra gigabytes are considered a bargain at 3.50 to 2.50 a piece. And decent quality movies take up a few gigabytes apiece, so don't be suprised when heavy uses bring shocking bills.

If you want to monitor bandwidth usage I would suggest using a router in your LAN or WiFi network capable of being loaded with dd-wrt software. They are ridiculously cheap; and can have graphs of daily WAN usage for months on end.

As the number of posts attests to...there is a big gap between even Sask towns and anyone more than a couplee of miles away from the fibre optics in the local telephone office. We are underserved in rural areas; and the gap seems to be expanding; and not narrowing.


THERE ARE THINGS THAT ENTERPRISING INDIVIDUALS AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS COULD DO ABOUT CORRECTING THESE PROBLEMS. BUT THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT ANYONE BUT A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE IN THE WHOLE PROVINCE ARE DOING ANYTHING TO CONVINCE SASKTEL OR THE LOCAL OR PROVINCIAL ELECTED OFFICIALS TO ALLOW SOME INNOVATIVE PROJECTS TO PROCEED.

[oneoff]

Somebody is paying for their satellite. The last thing on their mind is to make the price dirt cheap.

[BreadWinner]

We have Yourlink, is has 2mb download speed for $60/month. Twice as fast as xplornet but you need line of sight to the tower. I had to put up a tower for it to work.

[fjlip]

We had to remove top 20' of 10 spruce trees to see the Yourlink tower.
Service is extremely variable, within a few hours, from 500 to 2000 down.

[sumdumguy]

How to snub rural sask. Sure glad these overpaid
fat cats get their big fat raises.

[oneoff]

This just for Larry....Contemplate your navels over this one.


What will happen to even the best present rural internet alternative when even a significant percentage of customers demand to attempt to use any of the present surveillance, video streaming, telephoney (that could possibly be a word), internet gaming, long distance learning, alternatives to corresondence courses, on line trading or even gambling etc. etc. Is the standard being able to retreive your e-mail?

Remember our city cousins typically have access to maybe six concurrent Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Crackle, You Tube etc. streams and all the other usable internet features...simultaneously.

And rural second class citizens have to put up with paying a higher price for one or less features.

[oneoff]

I notice a worrisome trend of the 2.4 GHz background noise levels increasing significantly even in what is considered non populated rural areas.

It makes sense that transmitters of all sorts generate exactly the same radio frequencies that use the rare unlicienced frequencies that are of strategic value to cost conscious users. I refer to such things as remote sensing used by the oil industry, and the traffic from the cities and towns which is temporarily disconnected from their fibre optic and high speed microwave and satellite systems that are subsidized or paid for by employers; even multi national or billion dollar companies and the public purse.

But it is all we have (out in the sticks) for a reasonable cost; and maybe most of what "outsiders" have when on our rural turf.

A little long term planning please!!!!!.

[tipsy]

agchat your right.. this is nothing more than a good kick in gonads an attack on rural sask. the towers are still going to be there and used for cell serivce. why not continue to privide internet service. the internet service we are getting from this cell tower has been good, far as speed don't have a clue but fast enough for what we do.information from one of the installers we contacted told us xplornet will be slower serivce during cloudy stormy weather will be poor to no service and we pay more bloody brillant... a few years ago i contribute time and money to campaign to get rid of one useless and outdated government am i going to have to go thur all that again??

[tipsy]

oneoff enlighten me about a couple of innovative projects in regards to internet service??