[Tfug] Providers?

[Bexley Hall]

Hi Steve,

On 11/19/2012 9:51 PM, az teech wrote:
>
> Bexley,

Don  :>

> The service may be along the same lines of the ole earthlink/sprint
> WI-Fi services. But, it has been my experience that they are much better.

OK.  I've no experience with any of the above.  Just recall the
tall tower on neighbor's house when he had it.

> Have heard others say there are problems with this service; all I can
> speak to is our experience with them.

Of course!  Each situation is different.  I'm trying to learn
as much as I can about each of my options before stumbling into
a problem that I might have been able to foresee.

> I didn't have a problem with their
> service, or their techs. In the 3 1/2 years we had them, I experienced
> only one problem; that was with the LNA front end of the transmitter
> coupled with it blowing out the POE adapter that powered the transmitter
> which is located on the antenna.

So, the feed into your residence is a standard CAT5/ethernet drop?
I.e., all the equipment is "on the mast"?  (and, from your comments
below, *they* own/maintain that equipment?  Or, do you pay a
monthly rental fee?)

> Called their tech support line and I
> had a tech out the next day, transmiter replaced as well as a new POE
> power supply, plus a spare provided to me. When I thought I was
> experiencing interference, they had a signals teams out within a week to
> see if they could isolate the cause. They determined a new carrier was
> causing side-lobe interference; they contacted the carrier, and forced
> them to change freqs.

OK.  Not the sort of fix *you* would be able to implement so
good to see *they* handled it.

> I also never had any problem reaching their customer service department
> or billing department. (expect after 10 PM our time when they close for
> the night). And, they do have Techs on duty 24/7 (on call after 10 pm).
> Just have to leave a voice message and a tech will call back usually
> within one to two hours.

Aside from dialup service, I've never had any need for tech support.
(OTOH, if you are relying on a remote modem to answer when you
dial in and it fails to do so, there's not much you can do from
your home!  :> ).  Unlike Joe Average Computerilliterate.

> Tucson mountains are to the west of Tucson.

<ouch>  That might be a problem.  I can't even *see* any mountains
to the west of tucson from here!  (perhaps northwest?)  I'll have to
check a map for specifics and take a bearing from the rooftop.
Neighbor's earthink antenna was pointed west-ish, IIRC, and relied
on a very tall tower on his pitched roof home.  I suspect we'd need
an even taller "lightning rod" from our flat roof home  :-/

> As for interference, I never had a degradation of service due to any of
> the monsoon, or any other type of storm.

I don't know the frequency bands in question.  I know that it
is frustrating to *see* the TV antennae here on the NE side of
town "right outside the front window" and still have flakey
reception when it rains, high winds, etc.  And that's with
damn few things between us and the towers.  I can only assume
it would be more of a problem having to get clear across town
to find signal (?)  :-/

> They only degradation I saw,
> was due to it's use of shared bandwidth service. They only place 75-80%
> load on any transceiver, but when everyone is on using it at the same
> time (mainly when kids get out of school through early evening) things
> seemed to slow down.

Understood.  Same is true of any shared medium.  E.g., even DSL
has a bottleneck somewhere upstream (CATV, of course, has the
obvious bottleneck of the single cable!)

I assume they don't come out and do a site check before you
agree to their contract?  :-/  "Caveat Emptor"

Thanks!  I'll do some more digging...
--don