Rural Broadband Still A ‘Pipe’ dream

And if the large ISP carriers(ATT and Verizon) have their way, it will remain just that, a pipedream. Efforts are underway to have wireless networks classified as “broadband” in an attempt to get a bigger slice of the  Stimulus pie.  And we all know that wireless networks are very far from “broadband”, and especially so in rural Mississippi.

I recently had the chance to test a local wireless service from ATT here in Tupelo.  The price is around $50 a month and has a stingy 5 gigabyte cap or limit.   You can get the aircard itself for free, if you sign a 2-year agreement.

The card they sent us was the Sierra Silverlight and out of the box wouldn’t load the software from it’s internal storage.  I called them and they had me download the ATT Communication Manager from their website.  After a lengthy install procedure, the software opened and started to look for a signal.  Took a minute or two to find a signal, and a few more minutes to negotiate the connection to the internet.  All tolled, it was about 6-7 minutes from initiating the software to connect to the net.  And you thought your old 56k modem was slow!  LOL.

And the slowness continues.  From the three physical locations I tested this device, the 2G network was the only connection available.  All the testing points were well within the city, although not “downtown”.  A 3G network was found at one point but degraded to 2G upon negotiation. Performance at all three locations was about the same, extremely poor.  Only marginally better than that old 56k modem.  I can see now how they can get away with the 5 gig cap, you could never download that much in a month.

Here’s a close-up of the thing, it doesn’t look like much and it surely ain’t!

To add insult to injury, they are also attempting to have these networks exempt from the net-neutrality rules. This would effectively let them decide what applications you could use. They want to get paid to build an 8-lane superhighway while only providing a dirt path. And since conditions are so bad on the path you can only use a horse and buggy on it.
Here’s a jump to a reference article at gigaom: Carriers Aim to Keep Rural Broadband Under Their Thumb