Welcome to the self-proclaimed Rural Ottawa High-Speed Internet Blog. High-speed Internet access is virtually ubiquitous in the urban and suburban areas of Ottawa, but when I started this blog in 2005, only about 60% of the rural areas of Ottawa have coverage. However, even for rural citizens, high-speed Internet access is becoming as necessary as telephone service. Happily, high-speed coverage for rural Ottawa has increased significantly, and not only is coverage reportedly above 90%, many rural residents and businesses now have more than one choice of high-speed ISP.

This purpose of this weblog is to track news and events related to high-speed (broadband) Internet access in the rural areas of Ottawa and, to a lesser extent, in nearby townships.

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Saturday, September 20, 2008

HiSpeed in West Carleton Update

Posting on behalf of Sulo out in West Carleton. Sulo provided the update about 10 days ago, but I've been too busy to post it until now. --Chris



I waited patiently for Barrett Xplornet (a full year) to get their act together.

A few weeks ago their installer showed up and stated that they had upgraded the tower and equipment to 3.5.

The upshot was that I would require a 40 foot tower to receive the signal from Carp. $1500 bucks for a new tower and perhaps half that for a used one.

The installers indicated that they had recommended that a repeater be installed at Carp Road (Regional Road 5 and Richardson Side Road) but this was not done.

Based on other tests that they did in the area, it appears that the area bounded by Magee Side Road in the North, Richardson Side Road in the south. William Mooney in the east and Spruce Ridge in the south. This is the same dead area that I indicated in my post from last year.

Needless to say, I was not keen on a tower of this height and could not afford the cost.

So, I went to Rogers and purchased one of their indoor Portable Internet (WiFi) modems ($100) and pointed it at their closest cell tower. Surprise - 5 bars signal strength. Note that Rogers uses Near Line of Sight technology vs. Barrett's Line of Sight technology. The former is very forgiving of the geography (e.g. trees, other obstructions) whereas the latter requires almost a line of sight to the transceiver. Rogers also offers an outdoor modem for those with a more distant location from their cell towers (they don't utilize the cell cell network but mount their Wifi gear on these towers).

I attached the Rogers modem to a Wifi router and now have secure broadband access from anywhere on my grounds.

Woo Hoo!

-Sulo

posted by Chris Spencer at 8:58 am 0 comments

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