[Ww-snww-regional-list] Hybrid Model Perspective in Gross Error
Robert Heller
heller at deepsoft.com
Thu Aug 20 21:40:53 EDT 2015
At Thu, 20 Aug 2015 20:44:44 -0400 David Young <coordinator at town.warwick.ma.us> wrote:
>
>
> I get 10 to 14 down and one to 2 up.
We are *supposed* to get 20 down and 20 up for the town buildings (and will
once Axia provisions a circuit). Right now, Kemsley Academy (formerly Lake
Grove school formerly Maple Valley school) now have has a 20/20 connection
over the middle mile (via a point-to-point wireless connection). The people of
Leverett get 1000 down and 1000 up, about 100 times faster down and 500 times
faster up from what you are getting in Warwick. And 1gig is at the *lower* end
of what fiber can do. Tier one ISPs (backbone ISPs) routinely push 10s of
gigabits over fiber.
Fixed wireless is always going to be limited. This is due to the underlying
physis of radio waves.
>
> David
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Raymond DiDonato" <rdidonat at hotmail.com>
> Sent: â8/â20/â2015 8:48 PM
> To: "coordinator at town.warwick.ma.us" <coordinator at town.warwick.ma.us>; "almackable at gmail.com" <almackable at gmail.com>; "heller at deepsoft.com" <heller at deepsoft.com>
> Cc: "ww-snww-regional-list at deepsoft.com" <ww-snww-regional-list at deepsoft.com>
> Subject: RE: [Ww-snww-regional-list] Hybrid Model Perspective in Gross Error
>
> Hello Mr. Young,
>
> Perhaps I am missing something regarding wireless performance vs fiber, but the experience I had in Wendell was as follows.
>
> I found the CountryRoads wireless we received at our library (and I believe fed by the Warwick system) barely more effective than my current HughesNet small office package, particularly in regard to downloading.
>
> We now have middle mile fiber running to our library, and it is night and day compared to what we got via wireless.
>
> I personally just find wireless inferior in performance and stability to fiber and barely better than satellite for business needs.
>
> Thanks,
> Ray DiDonato
> Wendell
>
>
>
> From: coordinator at town.warwick.ma.us
> To: almackable at gmail.com; heller at deepsoft.com
> Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2015 16:37:32 -0400
> CC: ww-snww-regional-list at deepsoft.com
> Subject: [Ww-snww-regional-list] Hybrid Model Perspective in Gross Error
>
>
> The article at www.stopthecap is fully in error with respect to service provided by Warwick Broadband, and far short of the truth with respect to TVWS with which we have some success, using the Carlson product. In addition it says nothing about hybrid solutions which would describe us as we are fully fiber backhauled. Somebody send me a link please to a cogent discussion of hybrid broadband.
> Warwick Broadband advertises speeds of up to 1Mbps down and half that for uploads, we exceed the advertised rate in most cases. The price for our best effort, which can provide as much as 11 Mbps downloads is $50 not $100. In addition we offer a tier priced at $30 per month which many residents select to start with and many more have downgraded to because it works for them. VOIP works and low res Netflix does too at this tier. Moreover there is no usage cap on any of our service plans. None.
> Blaze WIFI is not a reseller of WBS. I have never heard of them. We have three resellers who sell our service out of town and out of state. That is because the Selectboard doesnât want the Town Coordinator working on nonresidentâs needs. The resellerâs are WiValley.net; CountryRoadsNetwork; Mt Grace Broadband.
> What follows is the load of crap that I am responding to and I have no more confidence in facts presented by âstopthecapâ than the Onion.
> David Young
> âWhat About Wireless ISPs?
> Second, there are traditional Wireless ISPs (WISPs) which do a reasonably good job reaching very sparsely populated areas, as long as customers are willing to sacrifice speed and pay higher costs.
> BlazeWIFI advertises service in the rural community of Warwick, Mass (zip code: 01378). But it is anything but a bargain. The least expensive plan is $99.99 a month and that offers the dismally slow speed of 1.5Mbps for downloading and only 512kbps for uploading. It also includes a data cap of 25GB a month. That is slowband and a last resort. Itâs more expensive, itâs slower, and it is usage-capped.
> Some WISPs offer faster service, but few are equipped to handle the FCCâs definition of 25Mbps as the minimum speed to qualify as broadband. In short, this technology may eventually be replaced by white space broadband where speeds and capacity are higher, as long as suitable unused channel space exists.â
> http://stopthecap.com/2015/05/07/western-mass-voters-stampede-for-fiber-optic-broadband-in-communities-big-telecom-ignored/
>
>
> From: ww-snww-regional-list [mailto:ww-snww-regional-list-bounces at deepsoft.com] On Behalf Of Al MacIntyre
> Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2015 10:19 AM
> To: Robert Heller
> Cc: ww-snww-regional-list at deepsoft.com
> Subject: [Ww-snww-regional-list] Hybrid Model Perspective
>
> After some of the discussion last night, I've been endeavoring to learn from whatever is available about other rural broadband solutions and came across this article on Stop the Cap! http://stopthecap.com/
> It brings into perspective the attempt at using a fiber/wireless solution, and the actual financial pitfalls of the hybrid model within our regional service area (Hawley). The rest of the site has some useful and intriguing articles, as well, and is well worth reviewing.
>
> Also, I wanted to point out that as I recall (and I will "dig" into it), dedicated wireless is not permitted on cell towers, according to Wendell By-Law, and possibly restricted, in general, per this town document, but I will pull it up for confirmation.
>
> Al MacIntire
>
>
>
> "There is strong evidence voters across western Massachusetts are not looking for a government handout and have more than stepped up to pay their fair share to guarantee their digital future, but some challenges can be insurmountable without the kind of help the FCC already gives to private phone companies that spend the money on delivering dismally slow DSL service. Western Massachusetts has demonstrated it can get a bigger bang for the buck with fiber to the home service â a far better use of Connect America Funds than spending millions to bring 3Mbps DSL to the rural masses."
>
> http://stopthecap.com/category/providers/wiredwest/
> Broadband Excitement Continues in Western Mass.; Big Support for WiredWest
> Phillip Dampier June 3, 2015 Broadband Speed, Community Networks, Consumer News, Editorial & Site News, Public Policy & Gov't, Rural Broadband, WiredWest, Wireless Broadband No Comments
>
> WiredWest is a public co-op seeking to deliver fiber to the home broadband across western Massachusetts.
> Despite the dreary drizzle, fog, and unseasonably cold weather that has plagued the northeast since last weekend, 191 residents of New Salem, Mass. crowded into a basement for the townâs annual meeting Monday night, largely with one issue in mind: better broadband.
> A reporter from The Recorder noted Moderator Calvin Layton was surprised by the overwhelming vote for fiber broadband â 189 for and only one apparently against.
> The town clerk for New Salem typically counts around 60 heads at such meetings, but this night was different because the community was voting to spend $1.5 million to bring broadband to a town completely ignored by Comcast and Verizon. That fact has hurt area property values and has challenged residents and business owners alike. The town is fed up with inaction by the stateâs dominant phone and cable company, which has done nothing to expand access in western Massachusetts.
> âOur goal is to make this broadband available to every house, not just the places that are easy to wire,â said MaryEllen Kennedy, the chair of the townâs Broadband Committee.
> New Salem isnât alone.
> Monterey passed its own bond authorization with a vote of 130 to 19, becoming the 10th consecutive town to vote in favor of bringing 21st century broadband to the region. The community of Beckett followed a day later.
>
>
> Phillip âThere are no broadband magic poniesâ Dampier
> Residents in 16 of the 17 towns asked so far to authorize the borrowing necessary to cover their communityâs share of the fiber to the home project have usually done so in overwhelming majorities. But it has not been all good news. The town of Montgomery in Hampden County voted down paying its share by just two votes. Supporters claim low voter turnout may have done the project in, at least for the time being. A call for a new vote is underway.
> Perhaps the most contentious debate over WiredWest continues in the small community of Hawley, where one activist has organized opposition for the project based on its cost to the community of 347. Hawley is in the difficult position of being a small community spread out across a lot of hills and hollows. The cost for Hawley to participate in the fiber to the home project would be around $1 million, a figure many residents decided was out of their price range. Participation in WiredWest was shot down in a recent vote and the repercussions continue to this day in the opinion pages of The Recorder as residents fire back and forth at each other, sometimes with strident personal comments.
> While easy to vote down participation in WiredWest, finding an alternative for Hawley has proved difficult.
> Kirby âLarkâ Thwing, a member of both the town finance and communications committees, is trying to find the cheaper broadband solution advocated by Hussain Hamdan, who has led the charge against WiredWestâs fiber to the home service in Hawley.
> Thwing has run headfirst into what Stop the Cap! feared he would find â the rosy budget-minded alternatives suggested as tantalizingly within reach simply are not and come at a higher price tag than one might think.
>
>
> Installing a Wi-Fi tower to bring wireless Internet access to a resort park.
> Thwing is looking at a hybrid fiber/wireless solution involving a fiber trunk line run down two well-populated roads that could support fiber service for about half the homes in Hawley and lead to at least two large wireless towers that would reach most of the rest of town. Heâs also hoping Hawley would still qualify to receive its $520,000 share of broadband grant money from the Massachusetts Broadband Institute to help cover the alternative projectâs costs.
> If Hawley can use that money, Thwing predicts it will cover much of the construction cost of the fiber trunk line. After that, each homeowner would be expected to pay to bring fiber from the trunk line to their home, definitely not a do-it-yourself project that will cost at least several hundred dollars, not counting the cost of any inside wiring and a network interface device attached to each participating home. Residents should also expect to spend another $100 on indoor electronics including a receiver and optional router to connect broadband to their home computer and other devices.
> But the expenses donât stop there.
> Thwing also has to consider the cost of the wireless towers and provisioning a wireless service to Hawley residents not immediately adjacent to the fiber trunk line. He will be asking residents if they are willing to pay an extra $25-50 a month ($300-600 a year) to pay down the debt service on the townâs two proposed wireless towers. It isnât known if that fee would include the price of the Internet service or just the infrastructure itself.
> As Thwing himself recognizes, if the total cost for the alternative approaches the $1 million the town already rejected spending on fiber to the home service for everyone, it leaves Hawley no better off.
> As Stop the Cap! reported last month, we believe Hawley will soon discover the costs of the alternatives Mr. Hamdan has suggested are greater than he suspects and do not include the cost of service, billing and support. Fiber to the home remains the best solution for Hawley and the rest of a region broadband forgot. Other towns that want to believe a cheaper alternative is out there waiting to be discovered should realize if such a solution did exist, private companies would have already jumped in to offer the service. They havenât.
> At the same time, we cannot ignore there are small communities in western Massachusetts that will find it a real burden to pay the infrastructure costs of a fiber network when there are fewer residents across wide distances to share the costs.
> That is why it is critical for the Federal Communications Commission to expand rural broadband funding opportunities to subsidize the cost of constructing rural broadband services in communities like Hawley.
> At the very least, state officials should consider creative solutions that either spread the cost of network construction out over a longer term or further subsidizing difficult to reach areas.
> There is strong evidence voters across western Massachusetts are not looking for a government handout and have more than stepped up to pay their fair share to guarantee their digital future, but some challenges can be insurmountable without the kind of help the FCC already gives to private phone companies t
>
> [The entire original message is not included.]
>
>
--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933
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