Okay, okay I was wrong. The good folks involved in the internet society managed to pull off the impossible and have a nice little system up and running! Congratulations! Please visit their web site at http://wynndel.ca/html/wis.html for subscription information, etc.

The system is connected to a Telus backbone using a 10mps fiber connection. Yes, it's fast.

The society part of the system consists of an Trango Wireless system operating with 900 MHz and 5.8 GHz wireless connections.

I had lot's of doubts that it would ever reach me. Problem is, I've got too many trees around my place. Matter of fact, I live in a forest.

Here's a picture of the antenna they mounted on my roof. Just below the roof you can see the 900 mhz customer unit which is connected via Ethernet to my computer router. The transmission site is on a hill a tad higher in elevation than my site. It's about 1km away. And all those trees in the picture? Well, they really don't show the true picture ... in reality there are more trees behind the trees.

Does it work? Yes. I've done a number of speed tests and I am consistently getting 2350 kps download and upload rates. Yes, upload is just as fast as download! Good show to the intelligentsia of Wynndel!

Updates

UPDATE April/2008: Well, sometimes life gets better; sometimes it gets worse. I'm guessing on this, but I suspect that there are too many users on the connection; and/or they can't afford the bandwidth charges ... but, my connection has been reduced. I'm now getting between 1000 and 1500 kps. Apparently that's as good as it's going to get. Hopefully Telus wireless or some other competitor will open here in the future (and the community group can keep things going until then). I'd hate to go back to a satellite connection.

UPDATE September/2010: The saga continues. Speeds remain about the same and reliablity is okay ... not great, but it appears to be 99% uptime. Biggest problem is that the speed most likely will never increase due to the ripoff rates charged by Telus for the fiber connection. Guess we should just consider overage changes a “sunshine tax”. If you want to view streaming videos in your living room, well consider a move to the big city.

UPDATE December/2012: Well, I'm still on the wireless system. Telus (the phone company), for their own mysterious reasons, continue to hook up folks in the much more sparely populated areas around us and Shaw (the cable guy) continues to hang cable on telephone poles in the area, but don't seem to be doing hookups. In the meantime a new contract has been negotiated with Telus and we now have a 100mps connection to the real world. Now, the problem is the network that has been built up here ... it's just not capable of using the new connection to its capacity. Speeds have gone up marginally, and the system is pretty much up all the time. Extreme weather takes it toll from time to time, but then we're shoveling snow instead of “surfing”.

UPDATE September/2013: Things are actually improving with the wireless system. The society has spent a bunch of money on new equipment, and it's showing. My down speed in the in the 4mps range, which is probably as good as Telus is giving folks in our area. Not bad. And, they have really increased the amount we can download each month with sliding caps and new packages. Good work guys!

UPDATE August/2014: Still struggling along with 20th century speeds. The Wynndel Internet Society is pretty much broke and the system is now being serviced by a wireless provider in nearby Creston. I'm sure he's doing his best ... but a max download speed of 1.5mps really isn't very exciting. Might be time to look at satellite again.

UPDATE May/2015: As mentioned above, in the fall of 2014 the Wynndel Internet group essentially went out of business. I'm guessing here, but it seems that the current contractor was just tired of the hassle, and the society was running into a deep black hole of having expenses greater than revenue. Our so-called saviour in all this, Telus, was a big contributor with it's overpriced POP we were committed into using. Another factor was their ambitious expansion into the southern areas of our valley.

Oh well, things have gotten better. Still no wired service, but I'm pretty happy with Swift Internet.