wWireless internet

[Doug P]

I am on a dialup and Bell will not be bringing me high speed within this decade. I have resitsted other tower based systems because of the up from hardware costs.

Bell is now offering their wireless modem for $80. A friend just installed one and it was pretty much plug and play. Speed is 3Mbps, fast enough for me.

The bonus is the unit is portable, you can move it to another site within the service area and still use it.

Has anyone been using it? I am on the fringe of the current tower system and might borrow by friends to see if it will work here. Cost is about the same as my second phone line and unlimited service I have now.

[thekid]

I've been using the Rogers Highspeed Portable since October while on site at a clients office at Yonge and Shepperd on the 9th floor.

Just to give you a bit of background, it is my understanding that both the Bell and Roger services are exactly identical, simply branded differently, but they're sharing the same towers and transmitters, so the coverage area and signal strengths should be identical.

I know on my Rogers Modem, there are 5 lights across the top of the modem, and they indicate the signal strength. I've played around with it at different angles, facing outward toward a window, and managed to improve the singal strength by simply adjusting the angle by as little as 1/2".

I've managed to download at a decent speeds, ~75KB/s = 600kbps, a far cry from the 3mbps they claim.

[dtompsett]

I'm waiting on highspeed where we are in the country. Bell apparently has plans to install in the nearest town (~5km). The wireless company in Peterborough finally came out and tested for signal (after I convinced them I actually could see the tower in ptbo... we have a huge elevation change on our property). They could get a signal, but it wasn't strong enough (25km radius... we're right at the limit).

Our dialup... is 28.8 on a good day.

I'm waiting for Bell to get their butts in gear and do this. The township has been talking about putting a system in for a while... rumour is they'll want as much as satellite for hardware/monthly fees to pay it off sooner. Some people only look at the short-term cost recovery... not how many people they're gonna scare away.