In the UK there is a lot of competition in the telecoms business but, in reality, most of the players rely on infrastructure owned and operated by one company - BT.
Urban customers benefit greatly from this competition and probably have the cheapest telecom services in Europe as a result. The emphasis of the providers is, understandably, areas of high population concentrations. The problem is that nowadays a lot of people living in rural areas need fast and reliable internet connections to do their jobs and run their businesses.
What do you do when you live in a remote area and the major internet providers have no plans to roll fast connections out to where you live?
In this episode Beeza describes how he found a solution and managed to get it implemented.
Comment #1 posted on 2017-08-26 12:53:18 by Tony Hughes
Rolling out a radio-based internet service in rural England
Hi Beeza
This was a great show, I'm glad you decided to come back and record again. You made some interesting comments about the way we have a Free market (after many years of a monopoly) in telecoms here in the UK which provides good value for the majority but works against those that do not make a profitable market fort the suppliers of Internet services.
Just a thought but did you investigate satellite Internet, I looked this up and it is expensive and seems to have quite strict data caps, but could be another way of getting a service if other options are not possible.
Comment #2 posted on 2017-08-26 17:59:42 by Frank
This sounds very like the type of connection my brother has; he lives in a sparsely populated part of northeastern Virginia, USA. He tells me that it is vulnerable to the vagaries of the weather, as he has lost his connection several times due to thunderstorms.
https://signawave.com/wifi.asp
Comment #3 posted on 2017-08-29 14:53:09 by Beeza
Thanks for the comments
Hi Tony
Before my initial chance encounter with the radio based system I did look at satellite services, but they were seriously expensive even before setting a download limit I can live with. That was around 2014. I believe they have got a little bit cheaper since then but they remain a "last resort" option for all but the deepest pockets.
Hi Frank
I can only speak from my own experience. Since the system was installed we've had winds of > 70 mph, thick fogs, thunder and no shortage of heavy rain, but the connection has been unaffected as far as I can determine.
The network nodes all transmit with a multiple of the minimum power theoretically required to provide the service. That enables the signal to "blast through" bad weather.
Perhaps where your brother lives there is a greater distance between the nodes which weakens the received signal.
I've just returned from Spain where I noted large numbers of internet service transceivers mounted on houses and apartments. I've since discovered that outside urban areas it is pretty much the default delivery method.
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