Wait a sec...Oh...No...Power Company Shoots Other Foot This is kind of turning into a blog, well ok, I'll date the entries. 06/01/07 Faster = Slower and less cost = more cost? hmmm
Older stuff With the recent announcement that our competition will be getting out of the Internet business, followed by their latest announcement that they won't be getting out of the business, folks must be wondering what's going on over there? (Frankly, we are wondering too but not surprised) Why were we told to throw away our 802.11b hardware and replace it with expensive satellite and now we are being told something completely different? First wireless is great, then it's terrible and satellite is great, now wireless is great again? When will this end? OHHH, now we see, they threw an incredible amount of money at and just replace eveything with Motorola Canopy running on the 5 GHz band with horizontal polarity. Good job boys. How will this affect our power bill? And why doesn't any of the Internet stuff show up in the Annual Report? Since it wasn't "cost effective" before it's certainly got to be worse now, Canopy is much more expensive, plus all new antennas and access points. Wow, I wish I had the money of a monopoly power company behind me. Now if they would just shut off the 802.11b radios they don't use and let everyone have the 2.4 GHz band back. Well, it ends right here. CS&T Wireless has been fast and reliable since 1999. We don't keep secrets about our service record, we don't abandon clients, we don't try to trick you into buying new hardware and we certainly don't laugh or scream at clients when they call up with questions or problems. We provide fast, reliable Internet service, full service computer support and training. Many of you will remember back in 2001 when the Power Company was having problems during startup and we rescued them, we brought their uptime to over 99.9% before they abandoned us, so we know how you feel. We'd like to try to dispel some of the confusion and mis-information that was offered by the power company in their recent letter to wireless clients. First; Just The Facts Your existing equipment will work fine, IF it was installed correctly. We have been repairing and transferring clients since August. When properly managed, congestion of the 2.4GHz frequency band is not an issue. We have seen the power company using as many as 5 different channels of the 2.4GHz band which has 6 usable channels. Cordless phones and in-home wireless networks are short range and typically do not interfere with higher power CPE designed for WISP use, IF your equipment was installed correctly. Our network maintains a 99.9% uptime with 1.5 Mbps throughput. We perform routine maintenance and take advantage of technology improvements. We have real-time, pro-active monitoring with full traffic and uptime history which clients can access at any time. We are proud of our service and believe clients should have access to our statistics. We bill for service AFTER USAGE. We have NEVER required a long term contract. We offer discounts for long term contracts as a customer option and these contracts can be terminated with a pro-rated refund. We take pride in our work, we don't need long term contracts to force clients to pay for poor service. We provide DSL in eleven states, unfortunately we can not provide DSL in Bridger Valley due to local telco business practices. DSL can be purchased at speeds that are significantly faster than 802.11b wireless. We offer DSL up to 7Mbps (except in Bridger Valley) Satellite services such as StarBand and WildBlue were designed as a "last resort" for home and business in rural areas without any other Internet Service option. Satellite is slower and more expensive than our wireless network. Recent tests we conducted on a local WildBlue setup showed a throughput of about 450Kbps download / 59Kbps upload with a latency of around 3500 ms (Note: this installation did not conform to the manufacturers installation specifications which may improve performance). CS&T Wireless averages a throughput of about 1450Kbps download / 1450Kbps upload with a latency of 15ms. This makes sense when you consider that a satellite is over 22,000 miles away so your signal has to travel over 44,000 miles to get from your house to the Internet. The high latency of satellite makes it unusable for VOIP (internet telephone), Gaming, VPN's, Citrix and any protocol that is latency sensitive. Streaming data such as radio and video (webcam) will be severely degraded. Web browsing will be functional, e-mail and file downloads will work fine. Don't even think about outbound data. Now a bit about us CS&T has been in the business of computer services since 1995 as a Wyoming "S" Corporation. Kevin (owner) has been in the computer business since 1983 and has extensive training and experience in microwave communications. Our business is computers, we provide high quality computer services at a competitive price even though we have no competition. We don't fix radios, tv's or lawn mowers. We don't sell telephones, electricity, pets or farm animals. We don't do brain surgery or rocket science. We don't play expensive tricks on our clients to make profit. We stay in our little place in the world and try to Play Well With Others. We're not a monopoly and we aren't trying to rule the world or put others out of business. Back in 1997 we leased our Internet connection from a satellite service provider because of the high cost of high speed pipes. This was an industrial system, the dish was about 6ft. across. It worked great but had the advantage of having a proxy server sitting in our office which reduced the latency problems for basic browsing. Of course we ran our own mail server on site as well (none of which the other guys do). All of our clients were on dialup and many of the protocols we take for granted now didn't even exist, but we did learn a lot about integrating networking and satellite communications. Once the prices for high speed wire based pipes came down, and about the same time 802.11b hit the street we got off the satellite even though it was cheaper, because of latency and downtime issues. CS&T was the first Wireless ISP in Wyoming. Setting up our first network in early 1999, BVEA service contract in 2001, School District wireless backhauls in 2002 and many short haul wireless networks for business, hotel/motel and government entities. We administer and maintain a number of small business networks like the Sublette County Courthouse in Pinedale. Yes, we do have references. In 2001 CS&T certified an employee to install Starband satellite service and installed StarBand technology for a short while. We decided not to pursue this technology. These companies have changed hands and technologies several times over the years trying to make the business show profit. Just a bit too unstable for our likes. Wireless Internet Service is complex technology, it's much easier to resell satellite service, they won't need to invest in anything or provide any customer service, when it's down you will have to call WildBlue, the local guys will simply install the service, Wildblue will do everything else. So here's the advice: If you want to keep your wireless service give us a call, we'll come by and look to make sure we can get service to you. If the shot looks good we'll charge you $40 to aim your antenna and reconfigure your radio and firewall. This usually takes about an hour. If we need to move, modify or repair your setup we may have to charge more, we'll tell you in advance, no surprises. Or you can bring your radio and firewall in to our shop and we'll configure it for $20. If you aren't satisfied you can cancel within 30 days and owe nothing. We do ask that if you have problems that we get a chance to try to figure things out, we've seen many installations that did not meet the manufacturers installation specifications and those repairs bring things back to normal. If you need high speed service and we can't reach you switch to DSL. 128Kbps or 256Kbps DSL will be slower but low latency will make it more useful than satellite. If you don't really utilize the high speed service go back to dialup, it's great for e-mail and modest web browsing. We do that as well. Since wireless is much more cost effective than dialup will they abandon dialup too? If dialup is too slow, can't get DSL and we can't reach you with wireless then switch to satellite. If you do decide to try satellite service you may as well contact WildBlue or StarBand directly, it's cheaper and they often have new client deals such as free installs. Technical References: WildBlue Communications Inc. www.wildblue.com
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