verizon home fusion internet

[ericlp]

doesn't matter about construction. Once the cell tower is there be it verizon or att ... They can hang new equipment to the tower any time they want. If the existing tower it there they can switch over from 3g to 5g any time they want. I think most towers in puna are already built. Some even share towers. ATT is already in bed with Intel that att is pumping in billions of dollars on wimax ... So maybe it will be good to wait a year to see what shakes out.

[kalakoa]

Actually LTE is mostly WiMAX; Clearwire (which is mostly Sprint) has the most WiMAX deployment.

Native WiMAX is around 3.6GHz. LTE can be anywhere; VZW has most of the 700MHz band, which will have better range. (By the time you get near 2GHz, trees are a problem, you really need line-of-sight.)

There is an unlicensed WiMAX band available for "public" uses like a community-driven mesh-network; since it's nowhere near 2GHz/5GHz it makes a good backhaul.

[rmelzig]

Yes, and Clearwire has recently announced that they're going to migrate from WiMax to LTE. The industry bake-off was a couple of years ago and LTE won.

From ground level inspection at the site, it looks like TWC has fiber right at the site (our HFC node is a pole or two away). The telco may as well have fiber there although the ancient GTE-style concentrator (SLC) right there looks like it's supplied by T1s on copper. The VZ plan for the tower shows a 4 ft dish. During one of the planning meetings the VZ contractor told me they would use it for backhaul if there's no good fiber available from TWC or the telco.

Rick Melzig

[kalakoa]

Interesting. Ironically, it's too bad Telcom doesn't use *more* SLCC, because there's a DSL sidecar for those, suitcase-size, can be installed in the field without a pedestal or CEV, and the uplink is just ATM over a bundle of inverse-mux T1.

[LastTangoInPuna]

Well Said!

Now where is the button labled "Subtitles"?

[terracore]

Here's the update on "Home Fusion". Most places in Puna can't get it (yet). The service requires the home to have a USPS mailing address, which most of Puna doesn't have. Verizon apparently didn't "think" about this before spending a fortune to market a product they are unable to deliver. The "fix" is supposedly available in January.

The home fusion prices are roughly 50% of what their data prices are in the "share anything" plan. 30GB/month is $120.

[kalakoa]

More than likely Verizon needs a "physical location" rather than a "USPS mailing address"; even those who actually have a "deliverable street address" usually pick up their mail at boxes a few miles away. The "location" thing is probably derived from an FCC "rule" (which itself is probably a side-effect of some Homeland Security idiocy, since as we all know, any technology can also be used for terrorism).

Very likely the Fusion "antenna" includes a GPS receiver. (This isn't the tinfoil hat talking, I wasted a month of my summer arguing nearly identical issues with Sprint; some of their hardware has GPS, and will not activate unless it can lock to the satellites.)

Subtitles: cost-effective technology exists for Telcom to deploy DSL to "rural" areas, but they choose not to; instead, Telcom complains about "cord-cutters" impacting their bottom line. Seems to me if you want to make money, you should figure out how to make a profit selling products people want -- either there's no money in broadband, or Telcom isn't really profit-motivated, I can't tell which. Oceanic is still making money right?

[kalakoa]

Actually: the location requirement is mandated by E911. Any "telecommunications equipment" that might possibly initiate a 911 call must be associated with a location. User-installable equipment is not "fixed", so a "physical street address" might not be accurate. Same reason all cellphones now have GPS.

[rmelzig]

Yes, E911 requires GPS or an alternate triangulation method.

You see GPS antenas at all cellphone bases, and even my Verizon co-branded Samsung femtocell* at home has to see GPS ('tho the antenna detaches on a 10 ft tether). The other feature of GPS is precise timing and some of the cell/pcs nets require it for synchronization.

*works great here w/o VZ service 'till the tower is done. Cell operators love them: no real estate cost (top of my bookshelf), no backhaul cost (my TWC cable modem), no power cost (my bill, meter, etc.).

Rick Melzig

[terracore]

Well we got the home fusion and here are our experiences.

Installation/signup etc was free via their special. Installation of the antenna (looks like a big coffee can, goes on the outside of the house) etc took about two hours. Was installed by island satellite (note: this is not a satellite service, it uses 4G cellular).

Have been using internet on multiple computers, streaming video, and playing online video games. Internet speed has been consistently fast, better than our DSL in Alaska was. It is also better than using the Galaxy II as a wifi hotspot.

Downside: Two year contract. Expensive. But about 1/2 the price of getting internet cellular any other way. In our neighborhood in Orchidland there is no other option other than satellite and dial up which is much more expensive and the latency is too high for gaming.