[funsec] Not so fast, broadband providers tell big users (fwd)

Wed Mar 14 03:15:30 UTC 2007

On 13-Mar-2007, at 18:36, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:

> Keeping this in perspective, the CIA Factbook says that Niue had a  
> population
> of 2,166 in July 2006, an area of 100 square miles (1.5 times the  
> size of Wash DC),
> and a highest elevation of a whole whopping 250 feet.

They used to have a bunch of trees that caused unwelcome attenuation  
the 2.4GHz band, but cyclone Heta took care of that little problem.

> Meanwhile, Montgomery County, Virginia has some 85K or so people, 393
> square miles, and more ridgelines and hollows than you can shake a  
> stick at
> (elevations from 1,300 to 3,700 feet inclusive).
>
> Probably 70K of those people are crowded into about 40 square miles  
> in 2 main
> plateaus - those are easy to cover.  The other 15K people scattered  
> across
> 350 square miles of ridgelines and hollows are a lot harder to cover.
>
> I posit that those 350 square miles are more remote, measured from  
> "the point
> the big fat cable lands at" (whatever landing station Niue has, and  
> the 2 or 3
> main telco CO's here), than any point on the island of Niue.  At  
> least measured
> by criteria that matter to the guy engineering the towers.

This conversation has suddenly become very weird. I suggest you go  
and spend a year on Niue before you decide to make claims that  
anywhere in the US is as remote (and, for the record, there are no  
cables which land in Niue, fat or otherwise).

If there's a practical difference between Niue and Montgomery County  
with respect to network access, perhaps it's that Niue is home to  
someone who decided to build a network rather than just complain  
about it not being there (hi, Rich!). Do the 70k people that are  
"easy to cover" in Montgomery County have free wifi? If it's so easy,  
why not?

Joe