Rural...err Real Internet Access!!!

[Matt Meiser]

If you've been around here for a while you know of my many trials and tribulations over the last 10 years for internet. First we had satellite, then Sprint offered 3G which for the time was great until they capped it. By then I was telecommuting and we tried a local wireless internet service that never, ever worked and were forced to go to a commercial 3G service that was costing us $170/mo (and who tried to bilk me for "damaged" equipment and termination fees when I left.) Then Verizon announced manageable caps and overage fees we could live with and finally 6 meg...no wait 3 meg...no wait 1.5 meg...sometimes 0 Meg DSL from Frontier.

That's about to change...
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Cable company is telling us we should be up and running by the end of the year. They are doing several underground conduit installs right now where they can't get to poles. In this case that pole he's digging by is literally the end of the road for one power company and the other power company's first pole is about 100 yards south. I'm told once we see them hanging wire, call for an appointment because it will only be a week or to at that point. Dec. 24 marks 10 years of waiting for us.

Now, do I want the 22 meg plan? 33? 66? 110? :D:D:D

[Larry Browning]

Oh, man you are gonna be in hog heaven! We could only get dial-up for several years out where I live. I even had 2 land lines with one dedicated to internet. Then one day cable system got upgraded to allow for high speed internet. What a great day that was! We went for 56k dial-up to around 10meg. They have upgraded service several times since and now we are at the middle level with about 30meg. It is all we need, it rarely goes down (maybe 2 or 3 times a year) and when it does, we get it back within a few hours. We have been known to stream 3 different videos at the same time without any problems.
I also telecommute some and I really can't tell the difference from being at work or at home.

[Art Mulder]

Matt,

It ain't just rural... I live *in* a city. Population of over 300,000. I live only 3.5km from the University. My house is not quite 30 years old.

Yet with Bell DSL I can't get more than 6 Meg. They just don't seem to have any interest in upgrading my neighbourhood.
(and I'm just wary of switching to cable, as I've heard too many conflicting reports.)

Congratulations on your upgrade!

[Larry Browning]

Matt,

It ain't just rural... I live *in* a city. Population of over 300,000. I live only 3.5km from the University. My house is not quite 30 years old.

Yet with Bell DSL I can't get more than 6 Meg. They just don't seem to have any interest in upgrading my neighbourhood.
(and I'm just wary of switching to cable, as I've heard too many conflicting reports.)

Congratulations on your upgrade!

Art,
YMMV, but everyone I know that has switched from DSL to cable has been extremely happy and wondered why they hadn't switched long ago. I think it is just better technology. It is faster and much more reliable. It may be different where you live though.

[Pat Barry]

Matt, Are they putting in fiber optic? My cabin in northern Minnesota has a fiber optic connection already to tap into, right outside my door. All I need is to have them hook it up. I didn't ask for it, they just put it in. I'm just too cheap to spend the money for a higher speed access at the cabin than I have at home thru DSL. I can get TV, Internet, Telephone. Its just too much too spend for weekends. Up to 25 Mb @ $74.95/mo.

[Matt Meiser]

Don't know for sure, but they did a project out west of Toledo in a similar area this past summer and did fiber there. I suppose it depends some on what they are connecting us to where the project starts a few miles away. I've got a couple friends with service from them, one in a neighborhood built about 10 years ago and one in the 50's. Both say the service is great and they consistently get the speeds they pay for.

We'll probably stick with DirecTV for television--for one we are under contract for over another year, but also we are satisfied overall with the DVR service.

Got a little scare as Frontier tried to stick me for auto-renewing 1 year contracts on DSL, but had the decency to remove the 1 year auto-renewal when I called a couple weeks ago. They even offered a $20 credit for the inconvenience.

[George Bokros]

I have earthlink internet over Time Warner cable. I just ran TWC's internet speed test today and my download was 16.5mps and upload 1.08 mps. When I worked I did do work from home on weekends and occasionally during the week and my speed was actually faster than I had at the office. The reason I did the speed test is TWC is offering internet at $14.95 / month. What I found is that the $14.95 is for 2 mps, to get 20 mps it would cost me $44.99 but for only one year then it would go to $54.99, I pay $41.95 per month for the earthlink over TWC and that cost has been the same since 1999.

Matt I think you will be happy on the 22mps plan.

George

[phil harold]

9 years I am still waiting
verizion is my best option so far

[Brian Elfert]

I switched from Centurylink/Qwest DSL to Comcast Cable Internet about two years ago. One minor outage with Comcast in the past two years. I never notice any slowdowns and it is noticeably faster than my DSL. Cable Internet was really bad in the early days, but it it very solid now. I mainly switched because it was cheaper than my DSL connection when bundled with my cable TV.

I know of a Scout camp in very rural northern Minnesota that has fiber optic Internet. I was shocked when I heard that as the administration building is at least eight miles from the nearest paved road and they have about a three mile private road to the admin building. They had been using satellite Internet and AOL dialup before that. (Internet is for staff use, not for the campers.)

[Rich Engelhardt]

I got cable in 1995. (Time Warner)

That was back when only Akron Ohio and some city in Florida had the infrastructure in place for cable internet.

For the first few years it was great. Then as more people signed on, the speed began to degrade.

You shared a 30Mb connection w/the block.

My basic 1.5Mb DSL was faster than the cable.
Outages were terrible. They only buried the cable about a foot under the ground & something was always chewing through it or water would seep into the connectors and corrode them.

Plus they did away with the local repair service and all repairs were handled via the service desk in Florida.

My cable modem ( A Motorola) also went out once and I was told there was a three week wait for a new one. I bought my own <--Important point! (A Toshiba).
When I stopped my cable service, and turned in my Motorola cable modem, they claimed they never installed Motorola equipment and as much as accused me of buying an old piece of broken equipment to turn in. I went back and forth with them on that and finally someone admitted that at one time, early on, they had tried Motorola but all of them had been replaced by newer equipment. They said the only was I could have been issued a Motorola would have been if it had been installed prior to 1999.
I told them it went in in 1995, but, for some reason their records didn't show that.
Rather than argue the point, I just gave them my Toshiba since I figured I'd never use it again.


BTW - I also dealt w/Time Warner on a professional basis at a number of customer sites.
Their tech support was horrid.
They always claimed the connection problems were on the customer side of the equipment when the customers would call them.
The customers would then call us in to check the equipment - which was always working fine.
They by some mystery, the connection would all of a sudden come back up.

For reasons only know to God and Time Warner, they refused to issue static IP addresses to customers, they insisted on issuing a reserved DHCP address.
When ever the connection was dropped for what ever reason, and a new DHCP address was obtained, it was never the one they had been assigned.

Sorry to be so long winded....I really hated dealing w/Time Warner

[Don Morris]

Matt,

I know your pain. When I was assigned to Italy, 1988-92, we lived in Naples. We waited for two years before we had a phone. And of course, there was no internet, they didn't even have lead free gas. Had to sell our US cars and buy European spec. cars. On the other hand, we found out, sometimes not being "connected" isn't so bad.

BTW, I bought a used BMW 520i that seemed to settle in around 85 mph on the Autostrade (highway) and a 4 banger "in town" car you don't even know the brand over here.

[Ole Anderson]

I have had Comcast for at least 25 years, and currently get a 20 meg connection. Overall quite happy. BUT; I also have Xfinity home security. When I leave town for an extended trip to FL I put the phone and TV on suspension to save about $100 per month. So far they have been unable to get it right and I keep loosing my ability to live view my camera. I have probably been on the phone 25 times with them to try to rectify the problem to no avail. You can imagine how high the frustration level is. Every time I get disconnected, I have to start from scratch when I call back. As I type this I am on the phone with them now (59:17 and counting) waiting for them to try to fix the problem. He is even conferencing me in on his discussions with other "experts", something they have not done before. I do have a guy that is really trying, but we'll see. Matt, which cable provider will you have?

[Brian Elfert]

I got cable in 1995. (Time Warner)


Cable Internet was really bad in the 1990s and the first part of the 2000s. Comcast installed fiber to the neighborhoods locally about a decade ago. There are smallish enclosures on the sides of roads every 1/4 or 1/2 mile where the fiber converts back to coax for local distribution. I think the enclosures have a small backup generator as they have gas meters at them.

I assume the reason TW didn't want to issue static IPs was to prevent people from running servers and using extra bandwidth. DHCP should generally give you the same IP at every lease renewal unless your computer is turned off for a period of time. If it didn't then TW's DHCP was really screwed up, or they intentionally changed the IP address often to prevent running servers.

[Matt Meiser]

Matt, which cable provider will you have?

Buckeye Cablevision which is the dominant player in the Toledo market.

[Matt Meiser]

Cable Co is still chipping away at the install. The big holdup seems to be one of the 2 power companies in play here needing to replace poles which they do at a rate of about one every 2 weeks. 2 weeks ago we got postcards in the mail announcing an early spring completion date. And yesterday they came through hanging stuff off the poles. Since there's a pole well into my yard they stopped to talk to me and see if I thought they could drive up to it or if I thought my yard would be too soft (it would.) Turns out they aren't hanging coax, but rather a steel cable which will be supporting fiber!

[Ralph Butts]

Congrats Matt,
I am totally jealous. We moved to the sticks about a year ago so I could have a stand alone shop and to get away from some of the things that we did not like in our small city. I have that same 1.5mb (sometimes) DSL from Frontier. The last time I called Comcast they told me there were no plans to expand service to my area even though it is about a mile down the road. I think that 1 mile difference starts the zoning change which calls for 5 acre minimum lot sizes. So the lack of population density may be a deal breaker for Comcast. Anywho the point I wanted to make was that I too have a satellite service for TV but when I was on cable I had a much better dvr service using a home theater PC and cable card tuners from Ceton. I had 8 independent tuners which I could share between 4 media center extenders. The whole thing was based upon a windows 7 media center HTPC and windows media center extenders like xboxes, etc.. I just read now there is a 6 tuner offering in both PCI and USB flavors and with some tweaking (tuner salad) you can bypass the tuner limits. My point you may want to take a look at the Comcast offerings with cable cards. no service fees, no equipment fees, you can share you entire media library to boot.

[Phil Thien]

Cable Co is still chipping away at the install. The big holdup seems to be one of the 2 power companies in play here needing to replace poles which they do at a rate of about one every 2 weeks. 2 weeks ago we got postcards in the mail announcing an early spring completion date. And yesterday they came through hanging stuff off the poles. Since there's a pole well into my yard they stopped to talk to me and see if I thought they could drive up to it or if I thought my yard would be too soft (it would.) Turns out they aren't hanging coax, but rather a steel cable which will be supporting fiber!

That (fiber) is an interesting twist. They haven't done that around here. I wonder what kind of hardware they will be using, and what kinds of speed they will offer.

I just switched from Time Warner to AT&T at the office. Time Warner gouges businesses (at least in SE Wisconsin), a 12x1.5 connection was $170 a month, almost $200 with five IP addresses. So when AT&T started offering bonded pairs that can do 45x6 for $100/month including five IP's, I jumped. I guess it is fiber to the DSLAM, and then copper from the DSLAM to my shop.

Then I decided to switch at home, too. I really needed to do something at home as I had problems w/ Time Warner every time it got real cold outside, my signal level would drop and my cable modem would constantly drop the connection.

I will be interested to hear what they actually bring to your house, cable or fiber and how it terminates.

[Matt Meiser]

Hard to say what will come to our house from the pole. I know Buckeye has been doing fiber in other areas.

Their top tier is 110/5 which is $186/mo and you can change that to 110/10 for another $5. We'll probably go 33/3 and pay the $5 extra for 33/6. We're undecided on switching TV overall, but won't be switching until they settle their dispute with the local NBC affiliate.

[John Lock]

Matt,
I've been with Buckeye for internet for 10+ years and the only complaint I have is with the "whole house DVR" system that they use (the built in Wi-Fi hardware is horrible). We have the 22/2 package and I consistently get download speeds of 16+ meg with 4 people and lots of connections (4 smartphones, 3 Xbox, multiple computers....). If you have any specific questions about them, IM me and I'll try to answer.

[John Shuk]

Unless it is VZ or Google you will get coax to the house. Cable companies run fiber to a node which will then feed the neighborhood on coax. All new equipment I think you will see pretty decent speeds. Good luck.

[Wayne Lovell]

We are conveniently located in the middle of nowhere, you have to drive 10 miles to spend a cent. It is about 30 mile to a half way decent grocery store, cell phones don't work in the house and only in select locations outside. We are stuck with satellite internet and TV both of which leave a lot to be desired. I would never trade living where my closest neighbor is a mile away and big brother is not always looking over your shoulder and telling you what to do to move back to town and all the modern conveniences you city folks have

[Matt Meiser]

Wayne, we aren't that remote though people coming to my house from the north think so. We are 1 mile from a family-owned auto shop, about 3 from a party store and a diner, about 6 from a place that passes as a grocery store, and 8 from what's currently the largest Kroger in the country, and 9 from a shopping area at the north edge of Toledo with Target, Lowes, Home Depot, etc. We can be anywhere in Metro Toledo in about 30 minutes and in Ann Arbor in 40. But on our road the smallest lots are 3 acres. 4 of us a slice of what used to be a 46 acre farm, all with 1/4 mile deep lots. Across the road the lots aren't as deep but similar in width. From what I was told when they were first looking to build this a few years back, the cost of this project is well over 7 figures and the cost per home is quite a bit higher than their usual upper limit--not sure if they are getting federal rural internet grants or if they are doing it because its the right thing to do for the community long term.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Where I am I get 70 to 90 Mbit fibre download speeds 22 - 25Mbit upload, where I'm moving to I get 1.5Mbit download ADSL at best :(

USA prices seem expensive, my Fibre is costing £18 (about $28) a Mo for unlimited use.

cheers

Dave

[Curt Harms]

Where I am I get 70 to 90 Mbit fibre download speeds 22 - 25Mbit upload, where I'm moving to I get 1.5Mbit download ADSL at best :(

USA prices seem expensive, my Fibre is costing £18 (about $28) a Mo for unlimited use.

cheers

Dave

Dave, I think USA prices seem expensive because they ARE expensive compared to other parts of the world. Wireless voice and data seem like the same story.

[Matt Meiser]

Been waiting 3,736 days but as of an hour ago I have an install appointment for 33/6 Internet and whole home DVR service first thing Thursday morning. I REALLY wanted to do the 110x10 service even for a month just so I could say our Internet is 100x faster than 2 years ago but the $180 price tag makes that an expensive gloat so I'll settle for 30x. The whole home DVR service is similar to our DirecTV Genie system and the whole package will save us over $60/mo. Pays back the ETF for DirecTV in 4 months.

That said I think the appointment will get rescheduled 2-3 weeks or so further out based on the conversation I had with the construction crew working out front this morning. They are really, really close to being ready but I think they'll need more than 60 hours.

[Ole Anderson]

Matt, I can't wait to see the gloat after you finally get to surf Creeker's posts at 30 mbps!

[Matt Meiser]

Unless it is VZ or Google you will get coax to the house. Cable companies run fiber to a node which will then feed the neighborhood on coax. All new equipment I think you will see pretty decent speeds. Good luck.

Not sure what a "node" is but they definitely ran fiber on the poles throughout the neighborhood. They have been installing round black can-looking things at each termination, I assume they'll feed us out of that. There's a green cabinet around the corner, maybe 1/2 mile away that has a bunch of fiber run to it, plus power. Not sure if the fiber cable they ran also carries power to convert to an electrical signal up on the pole to feed us or if we'll power that or what?

[Matt Meiser]

Today we got a letter in the mail from the cable company announcing service is now available, but also one of the splicing crews was working across the street about half the day. One of the neighbors has an appointment tomorrow so we'll see if they get her service or not.

[Matt Meiser]

And the answer I've been waiting for ....Fiber right up the the house! Contractor just stopped by to discuss the routing for a temporary drop because they can't bury it yet due to the ground still being pretty froze. He's going to have to install almost 1000' of fiber to get from the nearest tap on a pole in my neighbor's yard, to another pole in her yard, to the pole in my yard, down, around my shop temporarily and up to the house. When they come back in a few weeks to bury, they'll bury it across the gravel drive.

Unfortunately it won't be lit today as they still have a few things to finish up with the distribution. No one has a date but he thinks we are talking more like next week than next month.

[Matt Meiser]

So the cable dude started hanging the cable and had it lying across my gravel drive when a visitor drove in and drove across it which ruins it. Had to cut almost 300' off and start over--including rehanging on 2 poles. Guy who did it thought the guy was ticked at him but he later told me he was really mad at himself for not blocking it off. They are going to finish the fiber run tomorrow above ground temporarily (200' of it in conduit I'm supplying to keep my dog from chewing through it before they can get it buried when the ground is thawed.) But late this afternoon they got word that the the system isn't going live until late next week and installs can't start until the 8th so we'll have to wait a couple more weeks. After 10 years I can wait.

I also learned that for what I'm paying today for Internet I can up my speed a bit. So on the 8th we'll be getting 66/10 internet! This should be awesome after years of using a 3G device and then spotty DSL.

[Chris Parks]

Dave, I think USA prices seem expensive because they ARE expensive compared to other parts of the world. Wireless voice and data seem like the same story.

Australia is way more expensive than the US. Very limited parts of some metro areas have fibre and a lot more have ADSL 2. I supposedly have ADSL 2 but the maximum speed is 1.5mbs download capped at 200 gig per month. That costs me combined with my phone around $140 per month. There is a huge political barney going on as the government that just got kicked out started a national program to give every home in the more urbanised areas fibre to the house but that is under review due to a new government that thinks that no one needs that sort of capacity and they are trying to cheapskate the whole deal using fibre + copper.

[Matt Meiser]

This went on the back of the house late yesterday afternoon! Now we are just waiting on light. The tech said someone 4 doors down is still scheduled for next Wendesday and he doesn't understand why they would have told me they couldn't do it before the 8th (they generally can schedule about 24 hours out so it isn't that that's the next available appointment.) I have a call and a couple emails out seeing if we can get moved up.
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[Chuck Stewart]

This thread reminded me of an article I read about Google experimenting with fiber optic cable that would download 1 Gig per second!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2031472/Google-tests-worlds-1GB-second-broadband-service--100-times-faster-normal.html

[Brian Elfert]

This thread reminded me of an article I read about Google experimenting with fiber optic cable that would download 1 Gig per second!


That article is from 2011. Google has already rolled out Gigabit fiber Internet in two cities with plans for several more.

I'm really surprised Matt is getting fiber to the home. Good for him. The only way we'll ever see that here is if a competitor to Comcast installs fiber. I don't believe we'll ever see that here because Comcast has a legal monopoly. They have a signed agreement with the city that says they will be the only one allowed to provide cable service in return for a fee (tax) paid to the city every year. Of course, us customers pay the fee on our bill as a separate line item. So, customers are essentially paying so Comcast has no competition. This is common in every city around here. I believe it was done for two reasons: 1. Nobody wanted to install cable TV initially without a monopoly since it cost a lot to wire the entire city. 2. The city didn't want three or four cable TV companies installing their lines as it would be an eyesore on the poles.

[Art Mulder]

This went on the back of the house late yesterday afternoon! Now we are just waiting on light. The tech said someone 4 doors down is still scheduled for next Wendesday and he doesn't understand why they would have told me they couldn't do it before the 8th (they generally can schedule about 24 hours out so it isn't that that's the next available appointment.) I have a call and a couple emails out seeing if we can get moved up.
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Congratulations, Matt. So, looks like you take a Coax feed off that into the house?

I'm stuck in a neighbourhood with 6meg DSL and no hint of Bell upgrading... even though there is fiber in many other areas of the city.

[Matt Meiser]

Yes he said it will be coax into the "media gateway" box in the basement which will provide whole-home DVR, Internet (its the modem and router), and if we were getting it, phone.

[Matt Meiser]

High Noon on Saturday!

[Jason Roehl]

C'mon, baby, light my fiber...

[Matt Meiser]

Before
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After
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[George Bokros]

That is quite the improvement.

[Curt Harms]

Before
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After
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Dayum! Your DSL really DID suck, didn't it? How have your worked the T.V. part?

[Matt Meiser]

We went for their "Buckeye Media Gateway" system which provides whole-home DVR, Internet if subscribed, and telephone if subscribed all out of a single gateway by Arris which has TV clients that do IP over coax (apparently called MoCA?) which they installed in the basement. However I the router implemented in the gateway is horrendously bad and after a brief discussion with a tech support supervisor which included an option of them taking all the TV stuff back and going back to DirecTV they agreed to break the rules and disable the cable modem in the gateway and give me a standalone standard cable modem in parallel.

As a whole home DVR the Arris system seems pretty good at a first look. UI is no slow at any TV than our DirecTV Genie system was at the main TV and the Genie clients were much slower than these. The clients are pretty compact which is nice because it freed up a lot of space at the main TV where the Genie DVR and OTA tuner were installed but much bigger than the Genie clients which used to be behind TVs but now have to sit somewhere. Still need to solve that problem in my office--right not its sitting on top of a printer. Its about $20 a month cheaper than DirecTV for a comparable package on the same number of TVs.

The DSL steadily declined in the 18 moths we had it. Started out at 6x0.75 consistently and after several months they had oversold and invented a problem and cut my max to 3. They then continued to oversell until it got to where it was. A couple friends who have service from Buckeye said they consistently get what they pay for.

[Curt Harms]

I've become partial to MoCA. I bought a used Verizon FiOS router and use it as a MoCA Ethernet bridge. Theoretically it's slower than WiFi - I think it maxes out at around 200 Mb. but real world I'll take a wired ethernet connection over WiFi any day if I don't need the mobility.

[Matt Meiser]

They only use it for the TV client boxes. The gateway has built-in wireless and 4 gigabit ports for networking. The clients can be used on ethernet but are only 100mbps so the MoCA is actually faster, plus many people already have the proper wiring--installer was thrilled as the only new cable he had to pull was from my network closet to the fiber transceiver just across the basement. Other than that he shorted one cable for me. Houses that have had cable forever a lot of times they have to use the old to pull in new because its not rated for the speed.

[Jim Becker]

Your install is similar to what Curt and I have with FiOS here in SE PA. I'm glad you finally have a nice connection...that DSL was, um...well...{insert words not appropriate for this forum here} :D

[Bert Kemp]

Oh How I don't want to get in this discussion LOL .I'll tear my hair out when I hear speed of 10mbs and more. I live in a small town just north of Phoenix and the only game in town is Century Link DSL and I live over 3000 ft from the station they tell me I'm getting 5 mbs but speed test put it at more like 3 down and .5 up and I pay $47.99 a month for this carrpy service. No other cable or internet companies want to bother coming to this town of about 5000, and Century Link has no intention of up grading any thing. Why should they ? their making big buck off of this and don't have to do anything for it.

[John Bullock]

I have been an internet user for over 25 years. I started with a modem and eventually moved to DSL and then AT&T Uverse service. On the model with AT&T I only received 56kbps and when DSL arrived I jumped on the bandwagon and moved to 1.56 mbps download and approximately .35mbps upload. Recently AT&T upgraded me to Uverse, but without any change in effective speed. I do have to admit it is cheap at $14.95. I have continously checked with AT&T regarding fiber service and was told I was over 3000 ft from my central office and could not receive either TV or high speed internet since I was too far from the Central Office. Now you might think I was in a rural area but you would be wrong. I am located in a suburb of Los Angeles and my neighbor just two or three long blocks away can get up to 60mbps, but AT&T can't even give me an idea about when higher speed service will be available. I would be getting better service in a 3rd world country. Thanks for nothing AT&T. I am considering changing to Time Warner Cable, but it would triple my cost for one of the poorest services in the country. Thanks City Government for contracting with rotten service providers and for taxing cable services excessively. Sometimes democratic government burocracy stinks.

[Matt Meiser]

We were paying $83 for that DSL including the mandatory phone line that hadn't been used in over a year and $7/mo mandatory modem rental. The 66/10 plan we are on is $79 for the first year.

I've been fighting the providers for decent access for years. About 5 years ago I decided not to take "we don't serve your address" for an answer and started making phone calls and writing letters. If I didn't get a well thought out response, I filed a complaint with the public service commission. I spoke with someone with the word "president" somewhere in their title from Frontier, a small local phone/cable/internet company in the next town west, Buckeye Cable who was to the south, and Charter who was to the north as well folks from ATT (to the east) and Verizon who has excellent 4G coverage here. Most gave well thought out answers as to the economic reality that made service impossible. After numerous run-ins with Frontier over phone service quality they agreed to a bunch of concessions pretty much I think to get me to stop reporting every outage directly to their President of Midwest Operations. One of those was paying for my security company to install cellular monitoring and the other was to get me DSL through some non-standard wiring but I knew based on our history that was temporary at best. Buckeye was one that escalated to the a MPSC complaint and while their response was well thought out it contained some factual errors so I "rejected" it and that escalated it to a VP. We talked a couple times and he called me one day about 4 years ago and said that after reviewing a planned project and my location they had made the decision to expand that project to service us. However due to the economy the project kept getting postponed until last year. I think he was as excited to call me with the good news last year as I was to get it.