[lug] "New" wireless internet? pathbroadband and rock creek

[Phil Rasch]

There have been a few queries about pathbroadband on this list by
people in the search of decent broadband suppliers to the Rock Creek
and Centenial Valley areas.

People asked about their flyers, and then complained about the lack
of technical detail on their website (www.pathbroadband.com, a very
legit complaint).

Last week I got fed up with sprintbroadband into rockcreek and decided
to bite the bullet and find another broadband supplier. Sprints
performance was just too bad.

Neither Qwest nor ATT are yet running network connections into Rock
Creek so, after some digging, It looked like wireless was still the only
option, I called mile high online <www.mho.comand pathbroadband. MHO
took my name address and phone number and indicated that they would
call me back with info about availability for my location. MHO never
got back to me.

pathbroadband quoted me rates right away (basically $59/month with
discounts for long term contracts) and bandwidth (1.5Mbits/second up-
and down). They are the ISP (or rather they farm it out to
webconnects.com (wcox.com) so that is the only charge, other than
equipment and installation which is pretty steep. The salesperson
didnt have much technical info and referred me to their web site for
details.  As I said before their website is sort of pitiful for
technical info.

I was a little sceptical, so hesitated a few days and looked for other
alternatives. Nothing else appeared, so I called back and asked to
talk to somebody with a technical background.

They got back to me promptly and I started asking questions. According
to the guy I talked to (Bob Letson) it was founded by a few guys who
have been working for other wireless internet suppliers in the area
for the last few years. They saw an opportunity to do better than the
big guys, found some investors and started a business. Bob is one of
those founders. He answered my technical questions, and I was
confident enough to call the sales office back and try it.

They scheduled my installation for the next day.

The installation went smoothly. The technology is quite unlike that
used by sprint. They put a small box (about 1" by 3" by 10") attached
to a rod secured to my roof.  The box contains a radio, and enough of
a chip to run a http server. The box is manufactured by Motorola.

A CAT5 cable runs down from the roof into my house. The power is
supplied to the radio through the CAT5 cable. The radio points to a
transmitter on top of the Level3 building in Interlocken.  They have
another at Jeffco and one on the Key Bank building at the top of
McCaslin (maybe others elsewhere. I cant remember).
 
The technology in the radio is pretty cool. They start a web browser
running on a PC (mine or theirs) and open a window to the http server
running in the box on the roof.. It reports in real time things like
signal strength, distance from transmitter, receive and transmit
speeds, etc).  They can monitor the box remotely as well.

The performance has been great so far. After I swapped out an old 386
linux firewall (that couldnt run two network card fast enough), I have
never seen less than 1Mbit/second downloads (and often it is better
than 2Mbits/s). Upload speeds are slower (500Kbits/s to 1.3Kbits/s in
my experience). It is so much faster than I am used to that I have
nothing to complain about. Latency has been decent as well (I get
somewheres between 30-80ms pings to work [which is a T3
connection). That could be better but I am not a gamer and it is
plenty good for a VPN.

After a week I am still happy so I thought I would tell you all.
As far as I can tell this is a small outfit that is trying
hard to please, and succeeding. I hope that they can keep it up.
Their sales office is small and their web site is pitiful. But the
people (including the sales office) are prompt friendly and helpful).

Hope this doesnt sound like a promotion or something. I am just a
happy customer. They promised me a months service for each person who
mentions my name when they order, but I cant even take advantage of it!
My work is footing the bill for the service, and it all seems too
complicated to be worth the fuss!

You can contact me if there is something I didnt cover

Phil Rasch