Home-Brew Broadband DSLAM in Barn Serves Rural CO Area

[Nick]

Rural residents in Summit County, CO wanting faster Internet connections take bull by horns, build DIY broadband service.


Full Story (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,60525,00.html)

[Mike123abc]

I too live in an area with no DSL or Cable modem. Actually cable system probably will have cable modems out this year, but this has not helped me in the past few years.

I have had wireless broadband for 3 years now. An antenna on the roof points to the tower (about 3 miles from my house). The ISP is using 802.11b for 11mbit/sec. They actually have several recievers on the tower set up like a cell to get more bandwith (each direction from the cell gets its own 11mbit). They have a per sub cap of 2mbit/sec up/down effective transfer rate.

Small towns could easily do this type of work, it uses off the shelf components. The only issue is as usual if you can get enough people to subscribe to pay for equipment costs.

[Jacob S]

If it were not for the equipment pricing then I figure this would have been a LOT more popular. If these were made in bulk and more people were buying these things then the price would come down a bit wouldnt it? Also couldnt there be a monthly plan to where you pay so much a month of a long period of time, like a loan? How about a company leasing these out? It could bring in good money over the long term but the problem is if another standard comes along or cheaper hardware comes out or cable or wireless comes out in their area that is cheaper, then they would rid of it, and then that company would have a loss. One could at least have an upfront fee which would help some of the costs.

I wish I could start something up in my area to serve over the county and surrounding counties over several miles, and I have heard of such setups out there.