next message in archive
no next message in thread
previous message in archive
Index of Subjects
Hi Stephen. Thanks, getting the wireless service developed and up and running has been difficult. Your question is one that we get a lot in the office these days and it means that we are doing a bad job of communicating how the Chebucto Wireless service works. Most people's expectation is that if they wait long enough, we will bring Chebucto Wireless to their area. If we had a few hundred thousand dollars to play with that might work, but the truth is that we do not. We have not received any funding from any place and while the NS provincial government might have millions of dollars to give Aliant and Eastlink to bring $50/month highspeed access to places not currently getting highspeed service, they do not have a single penny to give us to bring $100/year highspeed access to low income residents of Halifax. So here's the deal. For us to bring wireless highspeed to an area we need three things. These three things have to come to us, we do not have the resources to bring them to people. In other words, if you want low cost highspeed, you're going to have to work for it. 1. The neighbourhood should ideally be low-rise residential, with a central permanent location that has a clear line-of-sight view to the top of Fenwick Place (or optionally, clear view to the roof of some Dalhousie University building). This central location would be the internet gateway and would provide the internet connection to the nodes in the neighbourhood, which brings us to #2: 2. Nodes to distribute the signal around the neighbourhood. For the average size low-rise residential block, three nodes should provide coverage. For blocks with heavy foilage or other signal obstructions, more nodes might be needed. Nodes need to be within a half-block or so of each other and for a neighbourhood to be considered viable it will need 10-15 nodes. Node hosts pay $50 a year for their Chebucto Plus membership, $150 deposit on the equipment and the electricity the node uses, since it is on all the time, about $46 worth of electricity a year. In other words, a node host pays less than $100 per year to provide themselves and their neighbours with highspeed internet. 3. Enough *new* Chebucto Plus users to support the service. We estimate that 35-50 Chebucto Plus members are needed to support a neighbourhood. There are posters and brochures on our website here that can be printed off by you which you can use to help organize your neighbourhood: http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Chebucto/Promo/ So there you have it. If your neighbourhood meets the requirements from point #1 above, then you can start organizing your neighbours. Get people to sign on and we can provide the connectivity to your neighbourhood. It's up to you. On Tue, 22 Jul 2008, Stephen Noel wrote: > Dear Chebucto net Personnel; I want to congratulate you in getting the wireless > service up and running. I understand that the geographic area where it can be > picked up is limited to an area about 200m facing North-west from Fenwick > Towers. I live about 100m South-east of Fenwick towers. Do you have any idea > when the service catchment area will extend in my direction so I will be able > to pick it up? > Best Regards, > Steve Noel ( aq934/noel@chebucto) > 5293 Green street > > >
next message in archive
no next message in thread
previous message in archive
Index of Subjects