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Garbage in, Garbage out - Slow Broadband in the North Country

By
Real Estate Broker/Owner with Madeline Island Realty 50317-90

Broadband consumers have forgotten the old adage, "garbage in, garbage out".

In a world of fast processors and Web-optimized browsers, there is an air of unreality about "wireless broadband".  In rural and low population density areas, it's often more like worthless broadband.

Obviously, the tasks you perform online will only crank as fast as your wireless broadband signal allows.  When your wireless signal is weak or nonexistent, you may not be able to download files & programs, or upload information to the Web, without difficulty.

Advertised signal speeds and upload speeds are wildly exaggerated.  It seems the wireless business is its own little kingdom where companies are permitted to mislead consumers at will, without consequences.  Television ads by wireless providers are full of misleading nonsense about "fast" speeds and "convenience".

Wireless cards and modems have improved slightly over the past few years.  The new Verizon USB plug-in wireless broadband modem now has embedded software, meaning that you no longer have to keep a software disk on file somewhere in the event the program has to be reloaded.  My signal reception on the road with the new modem (Novatel Wireless CDMA) is marginally better than what I got with my three year old Pantech Qualcomm CDMA, which had a little extendable antenna.

By the way, the new Novatel Wireless CDMA is free after a $50 mail-in rebate from Verizon.  I picked one up there yesterday.

But again, it's not the modem.  It's the signal quality that matters.  And on Madeline Island, whether you're using ATT or Verizon as your wireless broadband provider, signal quality just plain sucks.  

For example, my download speeds on a clear to partly cloudy day on the Island have ranged from a pitiful 2.28 kbps to just under 12 kbps at my real estate office in downtown LaPointe, Wisconsin.  Curiously, I have a somewhat stronger signal, more like 17 to 18 kbps, at my log home which is about three miles from downtown.  Both locations face the mainland.

At the log home, I was recently able to download an 8 MB package of software and print drivers from HP in about nine minutes.  That was on my second attempt.  The first time I tried to download the same file at my office on Main Street in La Pointe, I got a "timed out" message after only one-fifth of the file had been downloaded, which took nearly ten minutes. 

A couple years ago, I tried purchasing DSL service from our Chequamegon Bay area landline provider, CheqTel.  I found it not appreciably faster than dial-up and it cost nearly four times as much!  On top of that, the service was down frequently and I was forced to keep the dial-up service as a backup.

The Apostle Islands area suffers from a lack of decent cellphone coverage and broadband coverage.  The cellphone coverage problem is a safety issue and it will take a serious catastrophe to awaken people in the area to the need for more cellular towers.  The issue of slow to nonexistent broadband may be less urgent, but consumers need to squawk until something is done to fix the problem.

Comments (2)

Tom Braatz Waukesha County Real Estate 262-377-1459
Coldwell Banker - Oconomowoc, WI
Waukesha County Realtor Real Estate agent. SOLD!

Eric

Oh how true; I have an app on my droid that secures wireless for me. Nice new profile shot buddy.

Jul 31, 2010 07:49 AM
Eric Kodner
Madeline Island Realty - La Pointe, WI
CRS, Madeline Island Realty, LaPointe, WI 54850 -

Thanks Tom!  It seems like northern Wisconsin has quite a few pockets where there is almost zero cell or wireless broadband coverage.

Jul 31, 2010 07:54 AM