Broadband in the Boonies 2022

Not that I expect you to keep track, but were the very first Broadband in the Boonies missive to take on human form, it could legally purchase alcoholic beverages in these 50 united states. Indeed, on or about February 28, 2001, I explained what it was like to live with the now defunct (and may it rot in hell) StarBand satellite broadband system (domain name for sale, btw).

In later years (now lost to time and Macworld’s spotty archives), I exulted in DSL finally coming to my rural valley, allowing me to ditch the wretched dish bolted to my home. And I was happy, believing that this was just the first step in a future swollen with viable broadband.

As it turns out, that first step has lasted 16 very long, very frustrating years.

With fingers firmly crossed, I think I can say that step is finally complete.

I’ve detailed my various trials with AT&T over the past couple of years. When we last visited the subject I was struggling to get AT&T to restore a downed phone line, which would allow me to return to its terrible DSL service and receive hourly calls about the state of my extended auto warranty over a still-necessary landline. After a month I was finally back in business.

I continued to file the occasional FCC complaint, noting the company’s ongoing outages, anti-competitive practices, and price gouging. But after issuing two $100 refunds, AT&T’s Office of the President determined that the best way to engender greater customer loyalty was to tell me that I should count myself lucky to pay just under $300 a month for their godawful 5Mbps/640k service. They were out of the DSL racket, I was grandfathered in, and while some legal hocus-pocus prevented them from cutting me off, they could certainly do their best to drive me away with lousy service and usurious charges.

But I stuck with it. Not simply because of a native stubbornness, but because I had no other option. Sure, like many others living in rural areas, I put down a $99 deposit for Elon Musk’s Starlink pie-and-maybe-broadband-in-the-sky satellite scheme. But, so far, its arrival is a year late and counting, and the only communication I’ve had with Starlink is a note that they’ve jacked up the price. Even then, it was a hold-your-nose option. I’d do just about anything to keep from putting another nickel in that guy’s pocket, and littering the sky with satellites isn’t cool.

I had some hope that the President’s infrastructure bill, with its 65 billion smackers for broadband, would help out those of us in rural areas. But no. Providers like AT&T have already let it be known that while they’ve sewn extra pockets into their black trench coats to hold all the tax dollars they can glom on to, that money will be used to expand their services in metro areas—areas they intended to expand anyway, but now with our money.

“Way to bury the lede, Chris. You hinted that something’s changed. You want to get to that part?”

Yes. I’ll do so with a tale about another conglomerate that has done the dirty to largely-rural areas of California—PG&E.

Our local manslaugtering power company has earned the reputation as starter of wildfires in the Golden State. It has addressed any concerns over its negligent behaviors by faking its own death, shutting off power when an overweight squirrel tightropes its way between trees, and, at long last, trimming trees that threaten to sever power lines.

PG&E contracts with the Davey Tree Expert Company and a Davey employee got in touch to say that a couple of trees on my property were ripe for trimming. Happy to do my bit, I met with the very courteous young man who mapped out my trees’ fate.

Neighbor Monica, sensing an opportunity to give the axe to some highly flammable eucalyptus trees, joined us to suggest just that. Davey politely explained “Yeah, no, that’s your problem,” and to take some of the sting out of it, I changed the subject.“Yes, those trees need to go, but frankly, my interest right now is laser focused on getting better broadband. AT&T sucks.”

And then, with five words, Monica changed my life.

“Have you talked to Etheric?”

I had and I thought I was out of luck.

Etheric Networks is a San Francisco Bay Area-based company that, among other things, provides wireless broadband in areas where broadband barely or doesn’t exist. With a fiber backbone, Etheric uses wireless towers to beam broadband to its customers. With a smallish dish and line-of-sight, you can get up to a 100Mbps symmetric connection (meaning download and upload speeds are similar).

A couple of years ago, Etheric had come to a local town hall to explain their setup. I attended and begged to be added as a customer, but I lacked the necessary line-of-sight to the tower on a nearby ridge. What I didn’t know until last week is that part B of the plan had been implemented in the form of a couple of repeaters placed in my valley—one of which was clearly visible from my rooftop.

I emailed asking for a site evaluation, got a reply and appointment from the awesome Sonia that evening, and three days later, received the green light. Yesterday the totally professional Brayan arrived when he said he would, spent an hour installing the dish, running the cable, and hooking up my router, and I was in broadband heaven. I’ve been running Speedtest almost constantly for the past 24 hours and I’m getting between 60- and 85Mbps down and around 90Mbps up.

I understand that those of you with gigabit plans sniff unpleasantly at such numbers, but my very fine dudes, I’ve been in the desert for 21 years. When you hand me this kind of water, I’m not going to complain about its almost imperceptible mineral tang. I can now stop blocking nearly every device on my home network to prevent it from burning bandwidth in the background, turn on my camera for company video calls, and stream just about anything I damned well please.

I’m paying probably double what most with fiber and cable pungle up for, but it’s still significantly less than the monthly gouging I got from AT&T. My data cap is now 7TB per month versus AT&T’s 150GB. And I’ll save even more by ditching AT&T/DirectTV’s also-obscenely-priced satellite TV. I’m committed for two years, but after over two decades of horrible connectivity, I’m happy to tie myself to Etheric purely out of gratitude.

As for my AT&T DSL service, I’m tempted to keep it—without the overage charges, of course—simply for spite. The company would dearly love to shed every one of its DSL customers and I’d take a perverse pleasure in being the last man standing, forcing them to keep the lights on just to service my underused circuit.

But enough of the negativity. I’m thrilled right down to my toes that, at long last, I can join my 21st century fellows. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an internet to download.