Broadband

PENASCO, N.M. -- After five years of enduring Internet access that provided dial-up speeds for uploading and rarely exceeded 1Mbps down, I now cruise along in my home office on the edge of a wilderness area at 7.5Mbps for downloads. My uploads are 30 times faster at 1.5Mbps.

The path to my recent broadband liberation began on a day last fall when that slow satellite connection went dark for an entire day. A malfunction with the satellite literally caused it to shut down and turn away from the Earth. In the process of reporting the story for CNET, I came across a tangentially related tidbit about the launch of a new satellite, called ViaSat-1, which would soon be in orbit and providing new speed and capacity for my satellite Internet provider (WildBlue, which is a subsidiary of ViaSat).

I shared the good news with my family, but didn't plan to hold my breath for the upgrade to trickle down anytime soon through the layers of middlemen and resellers standing between that beautiful new bird in orbit and my Wi-Fi router. If you've read the rest of this week-long series or live in the sticks yourself, you know how new and exciting infrastructure can remain out of grasp, even when it's physically so close to home.… Read more

PENASCO, N.M. -- Since I first moved to this mountain valley in 2007, there's been a veritable explosion of telecommunications technology here. Back then, there was no DSL, no fixed wireless access points, and, most notably, no cell phone service in the area.

Penasco is situated along a route called the "High Road to Taos" -- more than 60 miles of scenic, high-altitude back roads that connect Taos and Santa Fe. Despite the higher elevation, there were few spots along the entire route where you could place a call before 2009.

That's when, after a decade of trying, the people of Picuris Pueblo managed to partner with Commnet Wireless, a cellular wholesale provider, to install cell infrastructure on an existing TV translator tower -- no small task for one of the smallest Indian reservations in the region, and one with few resources. Drive away from Penasco in any direction, and you'll find yourself traveling over one of four mountain passes to the next major town, so as you can imagine, even basic cell service here was a small revolution.

But it still hasn't helped me to realize my dream of true broadband Internet access at my home. … Read more

PENASCO, N.M. -- So far in this five-part series on my five-year attempt to bring decent broadband to my remote mountain home, I've struck out with cable and DSL and struggled with overpriced, under-performing satellite access.

Technology has, of course, advanced in the last half-decade, including here in the tiny Penasco valley, but it seems to keep passing me by. In the last installment, I explained how the DSL access available at my house isn't worth much, thanks to a lack of investment by our regional telecom. About the same time it was making its "upgrades," another broadband technology was making its debut here.

Fixed wireless service went up on Picuris Peak and another nearby rise in the valley, promising to bring speeds "at least five times faster than dial-up." That doesn't exactly qualify as an offer you can't refuse, but the top-tier package does amount to a baby step upward from the brutal satellite Internet setup I described in part 1 of this series.

Currently, the rural co-op offering the service provides speeds up to 3Mbps, but it will cost you $95 a month. That still looks pretty attractive when you're living with a 1.5Mbps connection with a harsh data cap for about the same price.

So I scheduled a site survey. In fact, I scheduled two after the first one didn't go too well without the senior installer on hand. The second one didn't go well either. The line of sight to both nearby fixed wireless towers -- the service requires an unobstructed path between an antenna installed on the roof and a tower as much as 15 miles away -- is blocked from my property.… Read more

PENASCO, N.M -- In the first installment of this series on my attempt to get decent broadband to my very rural location, I mentioned that I live on the edge of a wilderness area in the mountains of northern New Mexico. If I can get affordable and fast access to the Internet, it should be possible almost anywhere. But as I'll explain today, crossing the Digital Divide isn't always such an easy task when you're off the beaten path.

When I lived in major cities like Denver and San Francisco, cable Internet always seemed like the obvious choice -- it was often the fattest fiber optic pipe around and provided cheap, fast, and reliable access. But in rural areas, satellite television services have become so cheap and ubiquitous that there's little incentive for cable companies to invest large sums building out their infrastructure to far-flung places where most potential customers are already locked in to satellite contracts.

So cable's not an option out here. While satellite TV is cheap and plentiful, satellite Internet is a very different animal, and as I explain in part 1 of this series, it's neither fast, friendly, nor frugal.… Read more

Facing greater expenses, the wireless industry is trying to drum up profits by relying more on such services as prepaid and mobile broadband, says a report out today from PwC.

Surveying wireless carriers in the U.S. and Canada last year, PwC found a variety of challenges to their profitability.

Rising smartphone subsidies have forced providers to pay more up front for the privilege of carrying certain smartphones. Though obviously popular, the iPhone requires carriers to pay a huge subsidy, crimping per user profit.

And though providers have been pushing smartphones to their customers, the resulting rise in data usage … Read more

Editors' note: This is the first installment in a five-part Crave series detailing writer Eric Mack's long struggle to get a broadband connection in rural New Mexico, where he lives.

PENASCO, N.M -- Although my author bio hints at it, you might not guess that I file CNET stories from the edge of the vast wilderness.

I've lived here five years now, and it's taken me that long to cross the Digital Divide that still exists in this country between those who take decent broadband for granted and those who must constantly say, "Actually, no, I can't Skype."

Today, I finally have a connection at my home office that's on par with average DSL services, but it's not cheap and it hasn't been easy getting it.

Over the course of this and four subsequent posts, I'm going to share the 12-year odyssey that brought me from the San Francisco Bay Area to where I am today -- a guy in an isolated mountain village where many people live without Internet access (or even voice mail, for that matter) who writes about technology -- and my struggles to drag just basic broadband from the digital First World to my more... digitally underdeveloped home. … Read more

Today only, Newegg has a killer deal on an 8GB flash drive... (Kidding! Just a little joke for anyone who was following yesterday's comment thread).

In case you missed it, CNET's Dong Ngo recently reported on a new 4G broadband service from NetZero.

I thought I'd revisit this from the Cheapskate perspective, as it's kind of an unprecedented deal. For $99.95, you get the NetZero 4G Hotspot, which can share your 4G connection with up to eight devices. (You can also get a USB stick for $49.95, but I honestly don't see the … Read more

All eyes will be on the Federal Communications Commission in the coming months as it deals with a series of spectrum-related issues that will help determine who is a player in the mobile broadband market and who isn't.

The FCC is under pressure to get as much new spectrum on the market as soon as possible. Wireless operators say they face a crisis if they can't get additional wireless spectrum to fuel the growth of mobile data usage. But as wireless spectrum is increasingly viewed as a limited resource, regulators are faced with politically charged debates surrounding topics associated with spectrum. … Read more

Apparently Google has put some thought into this idea of bringing super-fast fiber-optic broadband to Kansas City.

The company has applied for a patent for "general edging systems and methods," which the application bills as "a low-impact, convenient, time-efficient and cost-saving optical fiber deployment technology."

The application describes a flat, perhaps bendable strip of "edging" that carries fiber-optic lines or coaxial cables tucked within. The edging could be slipped into a shallow slot, perhaps along a fence or driveway or dug into a lawn, or it could be camouflaged to fit into the garden … Read more