Broadband options for users in rural areas..

[SG]BGA

Lo lads,
As you can guess from the topic I was wondering what the broadband options are for me and my fellow mucksavages. I dont know if they would install isdn out here as I am a goodly distance from the nearest large town (8 miles) and a mile from the nearest main road. I would greatly appreciate it if you could let me know what my options are....

PiE

Well for one, ISDN is not broadband! I hope you and your friends realise that and if you don't make sure they do after this! Broadband is generally accepted as up to and over 256k. ISDN is 128k on dual channel, 64k on single.

Secondly, there is no broadband available in Ireland (except for small pockets in Dublin where NTL provide Cable access and I think small pockets in Waterford and Ennis?).

56k is most likely your only option if as you said, you're "too rural" for ISDN, which itself is overpriced, unless you wanna get Satellite but ehh...

Kix

Satellite is about the only option in rural areas (something like Europe Online) but if you're a gamer, as I'm guessing from your nick you are, that's not really an option either since pings are so high.

Don't worry though. Apart from overpriced and ancient IDSN, town dwellers aren't really any better off in the main.

K

[SG]BGA

Heh, to me anything over sodding 56k is broadband . Cheers for the info guys. I do however, remember hearing something about a wireless network run by Chorus running in Limerick, any truth to that?

bkehoe

In Waterford, Cablesurf.com offer cable internet to most of Dungarvan.
In Limerick, Chorus are running their Powernet service. The residential channel is full, so they're only accepting business accounts.

educom.ie resell Hughes Direcway 2 way satellite if you're interested in spending that much. If you want one way satellite (you still have to pay phone charges) try xanticbroadband.com.

Where do you live? An irishwan.org community may be nearby?

Brendan

azezil

Please note this person is not me, its purely coincidental that this person is in the exact same situation as me and is asking the same thing

[SG]BGA

I live in Co. Cork, between Fermoy and Mallow. I'm hopeful of adsl, as the nearest exchange is only 3 or so miles from me, fingers crossed.....

Moriarty

Lo BGA you big lard-arsed tit

Have a look at www.irishwan.org and specifically the cork group ( http://cork.irishwan.org ). Their begining trials of equipment etc at the moment, and have a very active mailing list. Its your only real hope for broadband in the medium-long term since your not in a city..

[SG]BGA

Oooh cheers Mori, sounds like a bloody good idea! Now to find someone in my line of sight..... Would be especially handy in my college apartments. Hmmm...

irishgeo

Hi there i live in the most rural of rural places in achill island Co Mayo. I heard a rumour round here that eircom where going to bung up a big sat dish on the local mountain which already has a eircom mast with mobile phone mast as well as tv transmitters.

Last year one of the dishes blew off the mast and we lost our phones so i assume the phones are routed through this mast.

I herad this twice now from 2 people.

Some how i cant see Eircom being that considerate. but if enough people were to use it plus it ,helps to be in the gealtacht.

If thats all the gealtacht is good for so be it. i must get on to gealtacht and see what they can do for me in regards to achill and broadband.

po0k

I live in moycul;len in Galway (officially inside the Gaeltacht) and I was thinking of drafting a letter to local TDs to pimp the idea of them providing base stations/net access/boosters/legal help if we can get the west setup with fast internet access for not-too-many-of-their-funny-euros.

look to www.irishwan.org though for more.

oscarBravo

Originally posted by Kevin
Hi there i live in the most rural of rural places in achill island Co Mayo. I heard a rumour round here that eircom where going to bung up a big sat dish on the local mountain which already has a eircom mast with mobile phone mast as well as tv transmitters.

Last year one of the dishes blew off the mast and we lost our phones so i assume the phones are routed through this mast.

I spent some time chatting to the Eircom engineer who installed my WLL phone line. He told me that Eircom are in the process of replacing all the landlines in Achill with WLL lines. Are you all getting little microwave antennae on your houses?

If this is what you are talking about, it's a nice platform but they are only installing the 64k version, so forget about broadband that way.

Moriarty

Originally posted by oscarBravo


I spent some time chatting to the Eircom engineer who installed my WLL phone line. He told me that Eircom are in the process of replacing all the landlines in Achill with WLL lines. Are you all getting little microwave antennae on your houses?

If this is what you are talking about, it's a nice platform but they are only installing the 64k version, so forget about broadband that way.

No, thats nothing to do with what we are doing. We are using 802.11b kit that gives you an 11mbit link over a few Km..

yellum

I would think there are grants for the use of technology in the Gaeltacht , and the use of WiFi might be a very good project to acquire funding.

The CorkWan is actively searching for Broadband sources at the moment. The technology works, we are testing this now and for small distances we are extremely happy. We are moving on to test longer distances.

What we'll be concentrating on in the next while is getting a proper plan together for broadband provision, which will include bulk buying and splitting into equal portions for all users, acceptable service levels, services allowed, network infrastructure and other messy things like that.

Its only a matter of time before the network starts spreading outside of the city. If it's a success in cork city, I'm sure other cities like Mallow, Middelton, Bandon etc. will adopt the same model for a wireless broadband network.

irishgeo

Firstly no letter about WLL. Not that i know what it is. Also will it make the net any faster than what it is.

I have seen no little aerials on houses and i have a nice little black line still connecting to my house underground like.

I dont think any WAN is going to reach this far anyway unless i set one up myself. But i cant see a great interest in it here.

Can you give me more info on what the EIRCOM man said exactly.

It seems interesting to say the least.

cableskeptic

Originally posted by Moriarty

We are using 802.11b kit that gives you an 11mbit link over a few Km..

I'll be impressed if you can get a few kms from a wireless LAN. Please let us know how these trials are progressing.

As you probably know already a better LAN standard is available (802.11a) which uses OFDM but the equipment is still a bit expensive e.g.

Proxim AP

However what you really want is the soon to be released Wireless MAN standard (802.16a) which will definitely give you the few kms required (uses OFDMA). Equipment should be available early next year (but as always will initially be expensive).

Wireless broadband is looking like a very distinct possibility in the near future (even for Ireland).

bkehoe

802.11b has no problem going over 30KM with the right equipment, which is unfortunatly illegal in this country. Legally, around 5-7KM is your max.