Breaking Up Is Hard To Do When There Are No Alternatives

I have the worst Internet connection in the world. It’s called wireless high speed. Hah that’s a misnomer since it rarely runs to its full potential.

A transmitter on top of a local hill AKA Pilot Mountain beams the signal out across the fields and forests. If you are within range and have direct sight you can pick up the signal with a receiver usually mounted on the roof of your house or, like ours, on top of a tree. The signal runs through a wire into the house.

Sounds simple except needing to have line of sight is a problem because trees grow and when they leaf out in spring a direct signal can get flaky. Moving the transmitter to a more auspicious spot can be dicey especially when it is on top of a tree and I have to hire a guy with spiked boots and a safety belt at a cost of $100 to do it for me.

The other problems are - the transmitters get struck by lightning thus the signal disappears, they go down if it rains to much and if the power goes out like when a logging truck, driving to fast, misses the corner, knocks over a hydro pole and falls into the ditch dumping huge logs all over the road. Traffic disasters like this happen at least once every winter. Of course hydro goes down for other reasons as well.

The signal also disappears when the Internet Company decides to fix or upgrade their equipment. This happened everyday for a week last month and on other occasions at least once a week. I think it is great they fix and upgrade they equipment but I also think it would be good business if they told us what they were doing and when and for how long we would not be getting any Internet service. I also think they should acknowledge their signal interruptions and tell us the reason why; they should apologize for the loss of service and tell us what steps they took to fix it. Informing customers what is going on makes such good business sense to me.

Instead I fret and fume, let my imagination overtake my good sense so I have to restrain myself from dialing up their office on the cell phone to leave them nasty messages about how the lack of Internet service is ruining my life.

I use the Internet a lot to do research for all my writing contracts. I keep in touch with my friends, family and work contacts though email, twitter and blogger.

On days when the Internet is down I can drive into town to use the free Internet available at the public library and at Starbucks. This is OK to do once in a while for a change of scene but you know I’m paying to have Internet service piped into my house I want it to work.

If that isn’t enough my phone line is also tied into my Internet connection. We use Vonage. Most calls in North America are charged a local dialup fee so my phone bill is a cheap $20 a month. However, if my Internet connection is spotty or slow my phone line also suffers.

I would drop this Internet Company in a heartbeat if they was something else. Currently the alternatives are Telus dialup or mobile internet with a Rogers Rocket Stick. The speed of the Rocket Stick is slower than high speed but faster than dialup. Although speed wise I probably wouldn’t notice any difference, the downside is that the Rockets Stick would cost a whole lot more money.

I've written about this problem before, here here here here and here. The problem is lack of competition, our capitalistic business model and low population in rural areas. If we can have zillions of TV channels, reasonable priced, accessed through either cable or satellite dish WHY is it so hard to have ubiquitous, consistent, high speed, low cost, internet?