Communication Technologies That Are Financially Viable in Low Density Mountain Communities

Let's face it: with a few exceptions, the internet service we receive in our communities stinks.  This past week we have had intermittent service for both internet and phone service.  Our service is probably as bad as rural India.  We should expect more.  (Read about my personal experience here.)

From a technical/business point of view, we are too few residences to excite the communication companies that might serve us.  Instead, they provide really poor service at really steep prices.  The technical problem is that their concept of how communication should work is mired in the 1980s:  if we are lucky, a fiber optic backbone, otherwise a trunk DSL line.  Then copper service to the residences.  This copper service is going to be poor by construction- it won't ever provide reasonable speeds for internet, let alone other services such as TV and phone.

AT&T has this idea that they can provide UVERSE service to us, again at a steep price.  They have tried it in one community with limited success.  Development has stopped in other communities.  But, again, UVERSE is technologically limited in speed and bandwidth due to the copper wiring.

There is a better technology, one we should be pushing AT&T, or inviting Verizon, to implement.  It would  replace your entire house communication ecosystem- TV, wireless, DSL, and traditional phone.  The architecture I propose is to use the existing fiber optic cable backbones in our communities, but to communicate to the individual houses through a distributed system of what amounts to 4G transmitter antennas.  There won’t need to be many, because 4G (WiMax, LTE Extended) has transmission characteristics that are ideal for our environment:

• Up to 30 mile range
• Can “go through” leafy and electronic interference
• Can “go around corners,” partly eliminating “line of site” issues associated with current wireless and satellite technologies.
• Low cost implementation

Individual houses would have to be equipped with receiver antennas and routers; I understand these are relatively inexpensive when rolled out by a communication company as a package plan. There are two extant technologies implemented for wireless:  LTE and WiMax.  Either would work and whichever vendor our community selects would dictate the technology we would use.

References:

• LTE Encyclopedia
• 4G Analysis and Drive Studies
• 4G a Game Changer for Internet, Video, Voice
• Broadcast Antennas
• Receivers: LTE Antennas, Verizon $50 (2 yr contract) router with VOIP