Thin Pipe, Part 2 : Your Radio Modem is *Where*?

Wednesday after a weekend without internet. What I had completely forgotten was that the town had gotten tired of running our internet, and had sold it all to a little mom and pop network company in the next town over. And the transition from our electric to them was happening this week. I gave them a call. I gave them several calls. By Friday I had finally wore them down and they promised to send someone out, Friday afternoon.
The guy jumps out of his truck, looks around. "Where is your antenna and modem?" he casually asks. We are standing under the tree it is in, I point straight upwards. It takes a moment to register with him that I am actually responding to his question. Keep in mind, this is a company that just took over our local town internet, they really had no idea what they had gotten themselves into.

He looks up, not seeing it. I point to the wire on the side of the tree. He follows it up with his eyes, until he sees the faint outline of the modem, complete with red blinking light. "See that red light?" I say. He nods, still stunned. "It should be green."


"That's not a standard install" he says. I agree with him. He goes on to tell me that if they go up there, it would be to take it down, and they won't support a modem up in a tree. My heart sinks, I always figured it would cost something to go up and fix it if it broke, but I hadn't considered that they would outright refuse to support it. Still it could not be argued, it really wasn't a normal install. I offer to pay for the repair, half heartedly, knowing what the answer would be. Then I decide to just take the high road.

"Sure, that makes sense," I say. "Whatever you guys think is best, I just want the highest bandwidth possible." The second option, always in my head as a backup, is to use a 900Mhz relay modem, that connects to a nearby tower. (The town sprinkled about a dozen 90 ft tall fiberglass towers around town as part of the network build out, these relay local signals that are not line-of-sight to the main tower on the mountain.) The system is not as fast as a VL modem connection, but it would be better than nothing. The issue though was that in the past, there had been interference between all the towers, limiting the bandwidth. As that depressing thought is circulating, install guy makes several gloomy proclamations about how wooded my lot is, and how the nearest relay tower is up hill, and how they would have to do a site survey to determine where to put up an antenna.

"Can't you just try it out and see? I used to have one of these before I got my VL modem." I am really starting to think he is going to leave without installing anything, stranding me on a Friday after a week of no internet at the house.

"No, we don't have any equipment in stock right now. We're still doing the transition, it's a holiday weekend, (July 4th) and we won't be able to get back to you until next week sometime."

"OK..." I manage, trying to contemplate going another entire weekend without any kind of internet.

"Don't worry." he says, jumping into his truck. "We'll solve this one. We're problem solvers." And he drove off into the setting sun, leaving us completely disconnected.

Next Time: MIFI, the Emergency Internet Solution