Anyone using a Wireless ISP

[Matt Meiser]

I learned today that a wireless internet provider is now serving our area. This is different from the cellular service I currently have. They were out last week while I was out of town to do some testing and confirmed that they will be able to serve us from their existing tower about 4-5 miles away. Additionally, they are probably going to locate a new 100' tower exactly 1 mile from my house--and if that doesn't work out I've offered that I'd be willing to negotiate a deal to have it here.

So I'm wondering if anyone else is using something similar and what I can expect in terms of real world speed? They say "up to 11mbs" but I know that's dependent on traffic.

[Bill Huber]

Matt, I don't have it but that was the only thing we could get for my daughter. She has had very good luck with it and it has only gone down one time in a really big storm, this has been in the last year.

For her it is some what like cable, the more people that are on the node the slower it will be but it has not really been a problem to this point.

Good luck and I know you will like it.

[James Ashburn]

I had it at my house for a few years. Only really went out during bad storms. Works only with line-of-sight to the tower. Tree leaves can interfere with it as well so make sure the radio is above the treeline. Speeds were almost as good as DSL here but was really a shared connection like cable modem. I could tell a difference when the local kids got home from school. It was still much better than dial-up.
Now that I think about it service was down for about a week once because of a virus that kept hitting the local server from a resident's pc but once they figured it out and protected the server everything was fine again.

[David Freed]

Works only with line-of-sight to the tower. Tree leaves can interfere with it as well so make sure the radio is above the treeline.

You are describing satellite service.

I have wireless with Verizon and it will hold a signal better than my phone. It works just fine inside my house or in a car in a closed building. The fastest speed I have ever seen is about 2.5 mbs, and that is rare. 1 mbs is fairly common.

[Bill Huber]

Works only with line-of-sight to the tower. Tree leaves can interfere with it as well so make sure the radio is above the treeline.

You are describing satellite service.

I have wireless with Verizon and it will hold a signal better than my phone. It works just fine inside my house or in a car in a closed building. The fastest speed I have ever seen is about 2.5 mbs, and that is rare. 1 mbs is fairly common.David, the Verizon wirless you have is cellular service, that is why it will work in so many places.
What Matt is talking about is a little different and is cheaper then a cellular service. What Matt is looking at will have a small round or square antenna on his roof and will be pointing to a tower, it is also much faster then the cellular service.

Satellite service is another type of Internet also, it uses a dish to look at a satellite in space and gets it signal from it. This is really high in cost and you generally have to pay $400 to $500 to start just to get the dish and the receiver.

[Don Bergren]

I have been using a point to point wireless internet connection since Sept. of 1998. It has been very dependable and I have no complaints. It's a 1 mbs service, although my ISP does offer an even faster option for more money per month.

Mine is as James and Bill describe, with a small antenna on my house pointing to a tower that receives the signal. From there it goes directly into my ISP's network. This is in small town coastal Maine and my ISP is a small local company in business since 1995, and has Verizon DSL (now Fairpoint) and Time Warner Cable for competition. They have incorporated towers and antennas into their network and there are no satellites involved.

It's very secure system that has served me through countless storms, despite the fact that I live about 400 feet from the Atlantic Ocean and its severe easterly storms that really pound us.

[Bill Cunningham]

Mine is a little unit that I have on the second floor of my shop.. They call it internet unplugged and you can take it all over (there are a network of towers) and just plug into it and your online, it even comes with a little carrybag.. I have this, because the Telephone company salesman told me that wired HS internet would not be in my area for a long time.. A week after I got it, my neighbor came over to tell me she now had HS internet on her phone line.. I guess the weasly salesman got his commision:mad:.. I like the service, particularly since all summer they have been rebuilding the road in front of my shop, and have cut the phone lines 4-5 times.. The neighbors wired system was down ,but my was working fine.. They say you can get up to 5mbs, but the catch word is 'up to' when mine gets to 1.2 it's rare, and I have the faster service.. You can check yours at speedtest.net ..
They tell you if you have trouble getting a signal, to put it in a window.. What I found out later, (and the phone company had no idea) is Argon filled windows are like a faraday shield to this thing, and they stop the signal dead.. If goes through wall better.. I have it on a router, and am using it from the house (next door) right now..

[Matt Meiser]

I would be THRILLED to get 1MBS. The service I'm hopefully getting is a ground based system like Don, James, Bill and Bill describe. They are going to install an antenna at the top of my TV tower which is aimed at an antenna on top of the grain elevators in town. They are also looking at putting up a 100' tower at a buisness which is directly behind my house by 1 mile.

We've had satellite, then went to cellular which was a big improvement, but now Sprint is limiting total data transfer in a month to 5GB. We are doing OK under that new policy by not doing video and not transferring large files but that's a pain since I work from home.

They are hoping to do my install in about 2 weeks. They are purchasing a bucket truck like the cable guys use and expect it to be ready to go next week some time. That will let them put the antenna as high as possible without a risky climb.

And I figure that once we get this, either the cable company or Verizon will suddenly decide that they should serve my area. :rolleyes:

[Barry Stratton]

Yes, we do, and absolutely love it! Check out bradcowisp.com for info.

The only time we have problems is during severe thunder/lightening storms......and we experience short outages.

[Phil Thien]

My friend had it installed at his summer home. He is getting approx. 2mbps down/768kbps up. It has worked flawlessly.

[Matt Meiser]

Well, we FINALLY got this installed today. There were a lot of delays in them getting their equipment up and running, then getting their new van with a lift so they could install my antenna as high as possible. Its pretty snappy. Right now the upload according to a speed test is very, very slow, but she said by far their heaviest traffic is on Sunday evenings. She also said the equipment does some self-optimization and will actually improve a little after a day or so. She was pretty sure she could see the top of the grain elevators where they have their base antenna installed while she was up there. Its almost 5 miles, so its not necessarily the easiest thing to see. For at least a while I'm keeping my Sprint card as a failover and I'm in the process of configuring a pfSense router which will auto-failover if needed.

[Leo Graywacz]

They tell you if you have trouble getting a signal, to put it in a window.. What I found out later, (and the phone company had no idea) is Argon filled windows are like a faraday shield to this thing, and they stop the signal dead.. If goes through wall better.. I have it on a router, and am using it from the house (next door) right now..


It is not the argon filled window, it is the low E glass. There is a very thin metallic coating on the window and that is what is stopping the signal.

[Ben Franz]

We tried a satellite based system (WildBlue) when we first moved to our house in the "sticks". Worse than dial-up - took it out after 2 weeks. We then used a local line of sight radio system for about a year and a half. Only trouble was during high winds - the provider was a really small company with one service guy so repairs took a few hours. Finally got DSL in our area (and indoor plumbing!) so we switched again mainly for lower price. Performance of the radio system was at least as good as Qwest DSL.

[Karl Brogger]

I have a wireless internet. My only complaint has to do with gaming online. I can't host games because of the way it is firewalled. Other than that it works really well. I think I'm 6mbps down, and 3 mbps up. I think its normally $50 a month, but I paid a year in advance and got a $10/month discount. I'm dealing with a really small, (as in one guy), company so it might be tough with a larger company.

[Tom Veatch]

Matt, I use Pixius which is a local wireless (not satellite) provider - small dish mounting in the apex of a gable pointed at a ground tower. Have had a few outages due to weather related damage to the tower I use, and some related to problems with their servers. But nothing recently or of excessively long duration. Although I think the downtime picture would depend heavily on the specific provider.

On the question of speed, again probably somewhat provider and time of day dependent, I just this minute ran a speed test using the utility on their website.

Reported results were:

Download Speed: 6559 kbps (819.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 2629 kbps (328.6 KB/sec transfer rate)

I almost believe I'd abandon the internet if I had to go back to dial-up. Naah, that'd be to drastic.