[Discuss] satellite Internet vs. fixed wireless

[dsr at randomstring.org (Dan Ritter)]

On Wed, Jan 09, 2013 at 04:54:13PM -0500, Tom Metro wrote:
> It makes you wonder what happened to fixed wireless around here? People
> were all excited about it back around 2000. I think there are still a
> few companies in the Boston area doing expensive fixed-wireless links
> for medium+ businesses. Nothing for consumers or small businesses. It
> seems like we got distracted by Wimax, which had more technical
> challenges dealing with mobile end-points, was undercut by cheap cable
> Internet, and increasingly cheaper 3G and now 4G cell data.

I had TowerStream service in Cambridge in 2003-2004. At the time it was
terrible: high packet loss, worse packet loss in rainstorms or with high
winds, service randomly out. It was very fast to install,
though, and priced reasonably (at the time.)

Their website currently advertises a special price of $500/month for
5Mb/s service. That's... not good. If you're in a Cogent-lit building,
you can get 100Mb/s for $1000/month. If you are in a facility already
served by another major ISP, you can probably get prices around $15-20
per Mb/s. Local loop charges can be nasty, if you have to pay them, but
you are still unlikely to have to pay $100 per Mb/s...

-dsr-