[SunRescue] re: [OT] Reliable net access in the boonies

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Thursday, March 29, 2001 at 19:37:31 (-0800), James Lockwood wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [SunRescue] re: [OT] Reliable net access in the boonies
>
> On Wed, 28 Mar 2001, Jonathan Katz wrote:
> 
> > the big expense of co-location there. Most places you can run a "empty"
> > two-wire copper feed to your local CO for $20-$60/mo-- drop in your own
> > DSL equipment at the CO and at home, (dsl router at home, dsl to oc-3
> 
> Ok, what are the hard numbers on what it costs to become a (mini) CLEC?
> I've always thought it would be horrendously involved, but if you have
> evidence to the contrary it's definitely worth looking into.

You don't become a CLEC just by dropping in your own PairGains or other
similar DSL drivers on leased copper pairs!  :-)

I know of at least one mfgr who make sDSL line drivers for about $500
each and they'll push at leat 56kbps through at least 26,000 feet of
copper so long as it's all 24 gauge or thicker.  I've got a friend who's
up in an almost rural area near a small town north of here and he's got
his house connected to his ISP at 512kbps synchronous with them.

You need to get an engineering study and quote on the copper pair(s)
from your telco before you go very far with planning though.  Some
telcos call them alarm circuits, or LDDS, etc.  Once you know the price
and hopefully the length then you'll know if it's worth the effort.

(If the lease price on the pairs is low enough I'd strongly advise
getting two pairs -- that opens up your options on drivers and gives you
lots more redundancy if you do end up with ones that only need one pair.)

I should really talk to my neighbours -- I've got a pair of 56kbps DSUs
sitting idle, as well as a pair of T1 DSUs and a half a shelf of T1 line
terminators, and I think I'm well within 10k feet of the CO.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods at acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods at planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods at weird.com>