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

[Phil Rasch]

There have been a few queries about pathbroadband here over the last few 
months, in the search for
decent broadband suppliers to the Rock Creek and Centenial Valley areas.

People asked about pathbroadband, 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 and decided to bite the 
bullet and find another
broadband supplier. Performance from sprint was just too bad.

Neither Qwest nor ATT are yet running network connections into Rock 
Creek so, after some
digging, I decided I still needed a wireless option,  I called mile high 
online <www.mho.com>
and 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 (basically $59/month with discounts for 
long term contracts)
and bandwidth (1.5Mbits/second up- and down) right away. They are the 
ISP (or rather
they farm it out to webconnects.com (wcox.com). 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) 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 order the service.  
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 CPU 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 is pretty cool. They start a web browser running on a PC 
(mine or theirs)
 and open a window to the http server running on the radio. 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. 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)
but 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 might share my pleasure. 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.

Phil Rasch