Running DSL Lines

SLOBuds · Aug 22, 2005

I checked one T1 provider that I found on the internet.

It was $1200 for installation and $600 per month for 1.5 meg capapcity. The $1200 could be rebated depending on length of contract.

It's obvious that installation costs are imbedded within the monthly service charge. I am picturing long spools of wire being strung 15 miles through a windy country road out to our little 10 acre parcel. And someone in a cherry picker nailing that one wire onto every telephone pole along that route.

Let's see, that's about 80,000 feet of wire and maybe 260 telephone poles (at 300' distance from each other???). Let's say 15 minutes per telephone pole. That would be 65 hours of hanging wires onto poles.

... plus the guys running the spools and keeping everyone supplied with Crispy Creme donuts and coffee ...

I suppose the actual traffic is just excess capacity from the telephone company perspective. So whatever it taks to gain new customers is just gravy. Like the cell carriers who give away phones.

Anyway. Pretty interesting.

Martin

thcri · Aug 22, 2005

I'll just go back to what I originally said. Check you cell phone providers. We are really happy with ours and it is inexpensive.

murph

ratter · Aug 23, 2005

Wow, this is bringing back painful memories. Wife and I moved rural PA from Washington DC. The company we both work for allowed us to work from home full-time provided we could get high speed internet. "Sure we can!" I promised. Whew...it was getting dicey for a while there and I was sincerely concerned that we were gonna get fired.

WISP - there's one in our area, but the proprietor is a flake and literally wouldn't return my calls. This is probably not all that unusual given the nature of the WISP "industry" and the kind of people it consists of. I even offered to pay for and let him put a tower on my property (a large hill with a 10mi view in every direction) - after all, our jobs depended on it.

ISDN - might have worked, but good luck trying to find anyone at Verizon to talk to about it, let alone get it rolling.

Cell - I was using a Cingular EDGE modem for a while. It was better enough compared to dialup that it bought me some time with our boss, but our house is at the bottom of our hill, so reception was very poor. I even had an antenna wired up in the attic. At best it was 2-3x dialup speed.

Satellite - we are connected via VPN 100% of the time, so this makes most satellite solutions a no-go. It's my understanding that the latency on consumer-grade satellite is too high and their compression schemes futz with VPN encryption. I did find one company, Skycasters(.com) that promise a VPN-capable satellite system. It costs ~$4k to install and I think $350/mo. Something like that. Sounded promising but I was wary of it actually working with the VPN, and of safety issues as well. They install this big-a$$ dish that needs to be mounted high enough that no one will walk in front of it if you know what I mean. Yikes. I've got a daughter. That's all I need is her finding the dish and getting cooked. Or the crows developing super powers. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif Their reps were the most impressive of all the companies I dealt with, I will say that.

DSL - no go. We're close enough to the nearest switch, but they did not have the correct hardware installed, and had no immediate plans to upgrade.

T1 - I was hanging on to this as a last resort. I figured it could be done, with enough time. The cost was really holding me back though. And then...

Cable - ahh, cable. Adelphia cable served to within 1/3rd of a mile of our house, but it didn't run to our house. MANY phone calls to their customer service over the course of a month and a half ("we'll check and call you back", etc etc) got me zilch. Finally, I went to their "local" office (45 min away) and talked to them in person. It took a weekly visit from me for a few weeks before they finally got their butts in gear, but they eventually ran the line to our house and installed us. $2300 to go that 1/3rd mile. Took them half a day, which leads me to believe that it was a total ripoff, but I didn't care. I'm so happy to just be connected. It's not anywhere near the 6Mb they advertise (best I've seen so far is 3.4Mb), but hey I'm not complaining. It's fast enough for both of us to work, surf, push photos around, etc. We even run three ATT VoIP lines for both home and business (HIGHLY recommended, btw, if you do manage to get enough bandwidth).

Tips that I would pass on to anybody in a similar situation:

1. Dogged determination. Don't take no for an answer (provided you're willing to pay). Especially when it comes to things like the cable or phone company. My understanding is that, often times, their contract with a given municipality/county/whatever is such that they cannot refuse a resident service, although it also often provides that the resident must pay any install costs.

2. Skip the national customer service and go straight to your local cable/phone/whatever offices. I was told (true or not, I don't know) that at Adelphia, for example, their national CS office can only communicate with the local offices via email. So coordinating anything between the two is a lost cause.

3. Talk to the local installers, guys in the trucks, etc. It was a Verizon tech installing a landline for us that clued me in to the fact that the tv cable service was so close to us (he explained to me which line was cable, how to identify it, etc., so I was able to track it that close to our house.) Contrast that with trying to call Adelphia and Comcast CS - neither one could even find my address in their database, so they couldn't help me.

Best of luck!
-Mike

Moon · Aug 24, 2005

I thought I would have Aldelphia cable modem installed last monday. Nope.
The installer showed me the line like I needed was about 200 ft away from my telephone pole (280 from the house). The 9db signal would not carry the 280 feet so the installer said he would check with his manager about this situation.

When I call to check the national rep says I'm listed as 300 feet away from them so I'm non serviceable. What a crock. I'm expecting a call back from the service manager. He was supposed to call yesterday but didn't. So I've just called them again this morning. Just 200 ft away. So close ...but still getting a hard time about it. About has me ready to go to one of the satelite services ....but first I'll follow this thru since cable would be a bit cheaper (and hopefully more dependable).
Are all cable services the same? The national install rep said something about a 56k cable modem that I'd rent from them for 3 bucks a month. That didn't sound right to me, but I was excited that I could at least get cable at the time. Hopefully the bandwidth would be mucho better than 56k.

Thanks for the pointers guys!

ratter · Aug 24, 2005

( I thought I would have Aldelphia cable modem installed last monday. Nope.
The installer showed me the line like I needed was about 200 ft away from my telephone pole (280 from the house). The 9db signal would not carry the 280 feet so the installer said he would check with his manager about this situation.

When I call to check the national rep says I'm listed as 300 feet away from them so I'm non serviceable. What a crock. I'm expecting a call back from the service manager. He was supposed to call yesterday but didn't. So I've just called them again this morning. Just 200 ft away. So close ...but still getting a hard time about it. About has me ready to go to one of the satelite services ....but first I'll follow this thru since cable would be a bit cheaper (and hopefully more dependable).
Are all cable services the same? The national install rep said something about a 56k cable modem that I'd rent from them for 3 bucks a month. That didn't sound right to me, but I was excited that I could at least get cable at the time. Hopefully the bandwidth would be mucho better than 56k.

Thanks for the pointers guys!
)

Adelphia sucked all the way up to and including the day they finally installed me. Took me two months to get them to run the line to my house. Then the day that they were to install the actual modem in the house, they came out but couldn't do it because they didn't have the proper tool to bury the cable (mind you, Adelphia crews had been to my house on three separate occasions up to this point, so it's not like they didn't know what was needed.) So I had a cable literally laying across my driveway and front yard between the pole and house for 3 weeks. Then finally they came and buried a new (thankfully, since it had been run over numerous times) cable.

I'd echo what I said above, find your closest Adelphia office and go there in person. Get names and phone numbers there, and skip the 800 number entirely. They're totally worthless. The locals seems to be slightly less worthless. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif Good luck!

ps - yeah, 56k modem isn't right. They will lease you the cable modem, for I think $3/month. And around here they have two tiers of service. I think one is 3Mb download (forget the upload) and the other, Premium, is 6Mb.

SLOBuds · Aug 24, 2005

Mike,

I was quoted $600 per month for a 1.5 meg T1, plus about $1200 installation. If you look at my case, this is almost a workable deal because our alternatives are to rent office space in town and get high-speed connectivity THERE. So that's an office, plus connectivity, plus a daily 30 mile commute.

Tell me if you know this: let's say that I foot the bill to get a T1 line WAAAAAY out there in the boonies (according to the city folk). Is there any way for me to share that line with other neighbors to get some type of offset to our expense? Meaning, is there any way for an ISP to work off of that 'drop' and possibly sell part of the bandwidth?

I notice that we may have some offsetting cost savings with voip.

I'm desperate for ideas here.

Just a summary of our options - we have no cable, no dsl, no cell phone connection, and no wireless providers. I don't want satellite - latency (Net Meeting and SameTime required for work). I don't think that ISDN throughput is sufficient, but also have not checked availability.

If memory serves me correct - it may NOT - I believe that T1 throughput of 1.5 meg is different from dsl througput of 1.5 meg. Correct?

Anyway, thanks for your help.

Alan L. · Aug 25, 2005

We have wireless service that we get about 500K downloand and 350K upload speeds for $50 a month. Kinda steep but better than Directway for less money. Setup was about $300. We have an antenna on top of the shop building pointed at the municipal water tower of a small town 6 or 7 miles away. Works great most of the time, even when its raining.

wroughtn_harv · Aug 25, 2005

Interesting discussion.

Just because the telco cable is in front of your house doesn't mean T-1 is available. The cable might have total saturation, no spare pairs.

Right now as we speak rural telephony is building fibre to the premise systems. I'm talking seventy miles of fibre installation to serve a couple of hundred customers.

The way it was explained to me was the federal government is subsidising the cost simililar to the old REA power grid construction. Even to the point that our utility taxes are paying four hundred or so a month of the FIOS bill of the individual customer.

It is a fascinating concept. All the benefits of the country and the city too.

Telephony and cable are both facing internal disease of the fatal kind. It's the perspective that everyone else is an idiot. The employees know the management is bonkers and they've decided the customer doesn't have a clue. Management feels labor is lazy and only there for a paycheck they don't deserve and the customer is out to rip off the company.

So no one respects anyone else. And like all prophecies it's self fullfilling. Everyone feels like they're the victim and so they become one.

It's really sad.

Especially if you need telephone service. It's almost like being a child with parents that are still kids. Your needs are secondary to theirs.

ratter · Aug 25, 2005

( Mike,

I was quoted $600 per month for a 1.5 meg T1, plus about $1200 installation. If you look at my case, this is almost a workable deal because our alternatives are to rent office space in town and get high-speed connectivity THERE. So that's an office, plus connectivity, plus a daily 30 mile commute.

Tell me if you know this: let's say that I foot the bill to get a T1 line WAAAAAY out there in the boonies (according to the city folk). Is there any way for me to share that line with other neighbors to get some type of offset to our expense? Meaning, is there any way for an ISP to work off of that 'drop' and possibly sell part of the bandwidth?

I notice that we may have some offsetting cost savings with voip.

I'm desperate for ideas here.

Just a summary of our options - we have no cable, no dsl, no cell phone connection, and no wireless providers. I don't want satellite - latency (Net Meeting and SameTime required for work). I don't think that ISDN throughput is sufficient, but also have not checked availability.

If memory serves me correct - it may NOT - I believe that T1 throughput of 1.5 meg is different from dsl througput of 1.5 meg. Correct?

Anyway, thanks for your help. )

I was just as desperate, so I understand. For me, I would've paid for the T1 if I had to, because even at $600 a month, it beats me and my wife both not having a job in the job market in which we live (insert sound of crickets here...) We also considered the office space idea. A little more palatable here since we're 10 minutes from town and space in town is cheap. But working from home is hard to beat, so I was keeping that as a last-last resort. c

I'm no expert, but I worked as an IT manager for a few years, so I just draw on my experiences there. And my understanding is that the deciding factor, when it comes to whether or not you are allowed to resell your bandwidth, is the contract that you sign with your provider. If it allows you (or doesn't prevent you) from reselling, then I think you're good to go. I wouldn't be shy about asking the T1 provider this. It's not the kind of thing you would ask a cable or dsl provider, because they don't allow such things and view anybody trying to do anything out of the ordinary with great suspicion, but a T1 provider would be used to hearing that question and dealing with that scenario.

Have you asked about a partial/fractional T1? That'll save you some bucks and should still be plenty fast.

About the throughput. 1.5Mb is 1.5Mb is 1.5Mb, but without getting into technical details, as another poster mentioned, comparing T1 and DSL/Cable lines with equivalent *advertised* bandwidth, the T1 will generally deliver on that promise much more readily - for several reasons, not the least of which is that T1 providers generally provide guarantees of uptime and throughput. Cable and DSL providers do not. In short, a full T1 is more than fast enough for most uses. The office I managed, we had one full T1 for connectivity (including in-house email server) for over a hundred employees with no problems whatsoever. So that leads me to believe that if you did want to get into sharing that with a few neighbors, it would be no problem, from a speed standpoint at least.

SLOBuds · Aug 25, 2005

Thank you Mike.

I did check on the fractional pricing and it slid down to as low as $400 per month. I'm going to see if there is a way for us to test a lower bandwidth here at our home office to see if there is much of a difference.

My wife is on Lotus Notes/Sametime, which is quite the hog. (Which is whre the tractors come in!) She does get a bit touchy when running an international conference call and I step in to download some huge thing.

The 'selling bandwidth' doesn't exactly make sense. What's the difference between me running an office with 100 people sitting at desks compared to running an ISP with 12 subscribers?

A couple of other ideas came to us last night, for anyone kind of following this. We actually have 4 living structrues on our 10 acre parcel. 2 of them are rented. So there is potential to sell high speed connections to our tenants. There is potential for us to actually RENT office space, with high speed connectivity. And finally we could create an internet cafe type arrangement where school kids could come over to use the equipment on an adhoc basis, paying hourly or monthly fees.

These are all arrangements that we would try to work with the local folks out there who might be in similar conditions as us.

Thanks again.