Motorola's Canopy line was originally developed as a cellular technology (that never took off), and shares more in common with GSM and CDMA than it does 802.11. Not all wireless internet is 802.11, or even close.

And it isn't outdoor use that makes 802.11 crappy, its the long range, blind neighbor problems (as you mentioned), and the ability of any one client to basically monopolize 90% of the capacity of an AP. Oh, and the crappy subset of the 2.4 ghz spectrum is no picnic either.

I do this for a living, 802.11 wisps do not work. I don't care how many tweaks you apply to it, they always hit a critical mass of customers.

The guy who posted this is on the WISPA mailing list was scrambling to deal with a slashdotting a day before this made the front page. Its hosted off his network, and he keeps paying that host more and more for bandwidth and whatnot, because most WISPS have a DS3 or two as upstream, were all just that small.

You don't want service from an 802.11 WISP, 802.11 signaling is great for carrying your laptop around your house, absolutely SUCKS wind when deployed for point to multi point last mile applications.

The Cadillac gear for wisps is Canopy or Alvarion. Both can deliver cable modem, and better speeds, for hundreds of subbies per access point, without degrading performance for all your neighbors. 802.11 wisps tend to be the ultra cheap shops, with the owners doing everything to make a quick buck.

No, please don't do this. Don't set yourself up a crappy 802.11 2.4ghz noise factory and call yourself a wisp just to get free internet in the boonies. It is a lot harder than you think, it is a full time job, and if you aren't going to do it full time, all you are really achieving is creating even more noise in the part-15 spectrum.

Not all WISPS are members of WISPA either, they may not even be aware of this map. It just appeared on the mailing list a few days ago. WISPA is awesome, great bunch of people, WISPS from Texas helping guys in Michigan out, we exchange ideas on mailing lists, send each other emergency parts when lightning kicks our asses inside out.

I should dig up my, "I work for a WISP, and please, don't give ANY ISPs money" rant. The stimulus package is fucking stupid. The DSL and Cable providers want money, have received money in the past, and have never done anything to extend coverage with it. All us little WISPS are screaming for spectrum, which we believe will be our great equalizer. We don't want money, let our quality service decide how much money we have, its called capitalism.

The big providers do not see a market in rural America. Giving them a ton of money isn't going to change that. I, and my fellow wisps, see great potential, and we are not asking for a dime to help us achieve it. Just give us some spectrum so we can get out of this part-15 roach motel we are forced to operate in right now.

Part-15, look it up. Basically, the crappiest part of the airwaves that no one with tons of money wanted for anything, set aside for public use.

See? This is why people who have no clue how something works, shouldn't be allowed to generate policy. You don't even understand how DSL works. But you just KNOW the answer, don't you?

You can't just magically "upgrade the lines" for DSL, the limiting factor of DSL availability is distance from the central office(CO). If you are too far away, sometimes called "being beyond the DSL line", you can attach the line to a DSLAM at the CO, and slap an ADSL modem at the customer's house, and watch it never work all you want. No government mandate is going to fix that. Fringe customers are basically anyone past ~16,000 feet. AT&T has rolled out a 512k/64k service in the area for customers approaching 20,000 feet. Yeah, how do you reach longer with DSL? Make it suck more.

Have a friend, bought a house in the trees, so I can't even help him with 900 mhz(about half my top speed, but can go through some obstruction, yes I work for a WISP. Loop length is 19,000 feet, he gets.... 384k/64k, and regular spikes in latency.

Oh, and building a CO out in the boonies with even a small switch, and its own DSLAM.... yeah, your big LECs won't lose money on that waste of time, they have a history of sidestepping government mandated policies in negative profit areas by selling their coverage to some ultra low budget phone company, who cuts costs by having zero customer support. Why does everyone think that giving them all a ton of money, and saying, "you have to give DSL to anyone who asks" will make them behave any differently? They will sell out of the market to a small bastard company who wasn't in the legislation, and isn't required to sell DSL. They have done this shit before, and they will continue to do this shit. Wow, I got way off track, this issue annoys the piss out of me.

DSL is a cheap hack of a technology, its time to look elsewhere for answers.

1) DSL is never as cheap as the sticker price, what does your monthly bill actually say after they nickel and dime you? After you factor in the required land line that almost no one wants/needs anymore? My service costs $49.95, and your bill will say that.

2) $14.95 DSL in this area gets you 768kdown/128k up. Whoopdy freaking doo. I use my wireless service at my own home, I'm getting 5mbit down, 1.5 mbit up according to speedtest.net(not hosted locally). Two local cable companies in the area, one can match our download speeds, neither can beat us on upload.

3) The radio itself costs us $250 bucks, and I don't ask the customer to buy it, we just ask that you stick around for at least a year so we can make a little money. Also have to recoup our bandwidth costs, cost of wiring, access points. Contrary to popular belief, being an ISP is not growing money on trees. I do this first because I love it, second because it pays the bills.

1500 installs in 5 years, have yet to remove even 100 of them from service. Most cancellations, the house is sold, and the new residents want the service.

I'd prefer not to say, makes me feel like I am trying to use this to advertise. Not too hard to figure out though.

sure, whatever, i was half awake when i typed this blathering nonsense

Dear Politicians,
I work for a small, but growing, ISP, so bear with me, as this subject annoys me to no end. Not every problem can be solved by simply throwing a bunch of money at it and hoping for the best. All the wrong people are going to end up with that money, either corrupt individuals, or large carriers who are more interested in squelching small competition so they can continue to shaft their customers left and right. They don't want to improve, improvements cost money, big cable wants to maintain the status quo. Either way, none of this money is going to be used to service undeserved areas. Keep the money, please, don't give anyone a single dime.

You say you want to see internet delivered to the undeserved? Have you looked around? Some of us are doing just that. We are using part-15 spectrum to deliver 5+ megabit service to residents with no cable or DSL service available. Do you know what part-15 of the spectrum is, in reality? It is the useless chunks of the airspace that no one else wanted, 900 mhz, 2.4 ghz, 5.8 ghz, and a few others. Despite the severe limitations imposed on us all by the FCC, we have delivered magic to customers and businesses in these so called undeserved areas. We have used the crap airwaves no one else wanted, served the customers that big telco called profitless, and we are financially solvent. Keep the money, we don't need it, and the big companies don't deserve it.

So, I hear this tremendously useful band of data is going to be free from use soon, and that its fate is largely undecided. I have already mentioned that we have taken some of the worst air space in existence, and delivered an amazing service to our customers. What do you suppose would happen if you let us use that band to deliver broadband? Interference free, crystal clear transmissions of a massive amount of data to every nearly home that wanted it, Keep the money, give us the spectrum.

So you want to see the entire nation lit up on the broadband map, who do you think is going to do that? Verizon? Comcast? AT&T? If they could have, they would have done it by now, lord knows, you have thrown enough cash at the big players already, and I still get phone calls from happy new customers, glad to have service, because no one else offered it. No, broadband is going to come from the small business, there are thousands of us out there, we call ourselves WISPs, and we are doing what the Bells have told you cannot be done: We brought broadband to rural America. We have delivered affordable, quality service with a smile, with the worst tools we had to use. Now, imagine what we could do if we had 700 mhz. I am not asking you to give it to just me, I am not asking you to hand it over to only small companies, no, let all internet service providers have a fair crack at 700 mhz, and watch us deliver. Let Capitalism rear its blind, careless head, and watch the strong survive, and the weak fall. I already know I can win my own spot in the national broadband market, because I have been beating the telecom giants at their own game for 5 years, and winning. Keep the money, give us 700 mhz!