Wireless internet (Xplornet to be specific) and internet sticks

[Mahdi]

I'm moving to the country but need internet for work.  I've signed up for wireless internet from xplornet but hear only bad things about them, plus they cancelled the appointment to check to see if I can even get internet from the due to rain.

I am probably going to end up getting an itnernet stick as back up, but I am not sure what to get.  My girlfriends cell phone (a samsung phone using bell pay as you go) gets virtually no signal at our new house.  When I check the mobile internet coverage I see that I am on the core digital network, not the 3g network, but nothing explains what that means!  I check the rogers website and see that I am on  the 2G network with variable service, meaning I should be fine for on street (again, wtf does that mean?) or open area coverage.  Telus might actually ahve me on the very edge of thier 3G network, but I am not sure.  I was hoping anyone who knows about any of these services would be able to give me information on reliability, etc.

Thanks

Edit:  Nope, no 3G from Telus.

[Dragoon Knight]

From the UK versions of the services you describe, I'll give you a basic run-down.

Mobile Broadband (i.e. "internet sticks" or USB Dongles with SIM Cards in them) is only useful if you can get a reliable, 3G signal.  If you're in a 2G area, this means you have to use GPRS, which may or may not have the benefit of EDGE.  To put it simply, you'll get service equal to possibly half that of an old 56k Dial-Up connection.

If you're in a 3G area with good signal, you'll get perhaps 1.5Mbps... so broadband (i.e. DSL or Cable) speeds, but just barely.  Tune that down the worse the coverage.

Couple all of this with the extortionate fees associated with Mobile Broadband, and it's really not worth getting, especially if you're paying for a 3G service and only getting 2G coverage.

Wireless Broadband is something that isn't really in this part of the UK, so I can't offer any insight.  You might want to check with other FED2k'ers that are in some of the bigger cities and use open-access WiFi.  My best guess is that it would be a whole lot better than the Mobile Broadband solutions in your case.

[Andrew]

Bell has high speed "unplugged".

http://www.bell.ca/shop/Sme.Sol.Internet.Unplug.Home.page

To see where available:

http://www.bell.ca/shop/Sme.Sol.Internet.Unplug.Where.page

What do you mean by internet stick? I presume same as what I found above?

When you first talked about wireless you meant hook router up on your roof that points towards a tower that offers high speed?

I currently get my "high' speed over a 12km wireless distance. Router on top of 80 foot silo pointing towards the city. Come October 15, I am getting landline high speed.

EDIT:

ah, explorenet looks like tower sending signals to router on roof.

[gryphon]

a minor example of what you can expect. All depending on the distance to the tower and possible interference along the way.

GPRS 56 kbit/s up to 114 kbit/s

EDGE roughly 500 kbit/s

3G 2 Mbit/s to 14.4 Mbit/s

Normal cellphone coverage does not indicate nor guarantee a GPRS / EDGE / 3G network. As example, The Netherlands is almost entirely covert by GPRS and depending on the operator you use partially with 3G.

If you are not sure up front that you have EDGE or 3G coverage my first guess would be old visioned phone lines, WiMax or Sat coverage. An 3G USB stick from Vodafone works great for me in the city at 2-8 Mbit/s. When I leave town it gets worse. So I expect it'll be halve that where you are moving.

[Gobalopper]

What about asking your neighbors how they get their internet?

But yeah as gryphon said those USB sticks are really only good if you can get 3G coverage which I doubt if you are barely getting a signal on a regular phone. Best bet if you want to test coverage of Rogers is to get a friend with an iPhone and see if they get 3G coverage at your house. If they don't your speed is going to suck.

I know people using xplornet here in Alberta and they seem ok. But I think each area is run by a different group that buys usage of the name for that region.

[Mahdi]

What about satellite internet?  I've heard it was incredibly unreliable, but I cannot see how it would be worse than satellite TV which is fairly common.  If wireless does not work for me, satellite is available, although much mroe expensive. 

[Andrew]

I think I know someone with satellite internet. When I was using it (shared between two halves of a house), it was slower than normal high speed, but definitely faster than dialup. I think it was getting 50kb/s download. But then the other neighbour (owner) could have had restriction ins place or using the bandwidth. So I'm not sure how fast it really was. Slower than regular high speed, but much better than dialup. It sucked at torrents.

[Gruntlord6]

I think I know someone with satellite internet. When I was using it (shared between two halves of a house), it was slower than normal high speed, but definitely faster than dialup. I think it was getting 50kb/s download. But then the other neighbour (owner) could have had restriction ins place or using the bandwidth. So I'm not sure how fast it really was. Slower than regular high speed, but much better than dialup. It sucked at torrents.

your limited to 500 mb downloads.

the internet sticks are only twice the speed of dial up, and expensive, plus in order to get one you need a 1 year service contract.

[Mahdi]

Well, a few hundred dollars later and I have wireless internet.  They had to isntall a tripod on the top of my roof (hence all of the money).  You can tell that it is slower than rogers high speed light, but not a great deal more.  If I'm streaming somethign it takes a little longer and my torrents are noticably slower.  No outages yet - at least none that I think are due to the internet.  My router alwas seems to have problems at certain times of the day.

[Andrew]

What seems to be your average download/upload speed?

[Gruntlord6]

What seems to be your average download/upload speed?

and are there any data caps?

[Mahdi]

and are there any data caps?

No data caps.  Upload/download is shown to be much, much slower than using high speed light.  Torrents take forever, although leaving them on over night when no one else is online speeds them up considerably, but still not as fast as the slowest cable.