>Ooooh. There's a school just down the road from me, and I overlook it :-) I
>was fairly gutted that there is a ridge between me and the sky tower, but if
>they are going to get this school, then they ought to get me. Do you know if
>they are using the same technology they deployed on the sky tower? My whoosh
>is a bit crappy.

Yes, Whoosh is a bit crappy from what I hear. Their plans are crap too. As for the school, well it depends whether they are under Probe or not. Perhaps I should have made clearer but not all schools are under Probe only those in rural areas or who are unable to get broadband at the moment I believe. If the school can get Whoosh, then it might not be under Probe although I'm not so sure since I think Probe schools were designated quite a while back. The bigger problem is probably whether they can get Jetstream or not. If they can then I suspect they might not be under Probe but who knows (quite a lot of people actually but not me).

I was fairly gutted when I was informed Sky Tower is too far from me but haven't given up hope. There are schools under Probe that are hopefully close enough that I will be covered with them. More importantly though, I get the feeling WC want to cover as much as Auckland as possible even if it's not under Probe (given that we are NZ's most populated region by far and Wellington/Chch have cable it makes sense).

I'm using Ihug Ultra terrestrial which is fast but only has 5gb international data and costs a lot. As it uses a modem, ping times are modem like and it hogs the phone line. In theory, it could be reliable but for some reason (I think the card drivers) it keeps dying requiring a restart of Windows. So I know how annoying it is being stuck with crappy internet. I could get ADSL, the new bitstream packages look tempting even if slow but I think I'll wait...

I'm fairly certain it will be the same tech. They used it in the Counties region they first covered and in Hamilton so it seems unlikely they will change now. The transmitters may be smaller/weaker so they might cover a smaller region but that'll only mean that you're less likely to be covered by one. If you are covered by one, I don't think you should have a problem (they check signal strength, I know from experience, and all reports say fog and rain are not a problem). They only own licenses to the 3.5ghz spectrum which is not what Whoosh kind of tech needs so they can't switch to something like Whoosh either I suspect.

>Is there a better forum to discuss this? The broadband list seems justabout
>dead, or there is something wrong with my subscription.

We can try resurrecting it. There are still subscribers so if there is anything interesting they might reply.

However there are other forums. I think it's been discussed in various gamer forums (possibly GamePlanet) but the place I usually hang out in (and get most my info from) is www.nzwireless.org. Although primarily about setting up a community wifi network, there is a fair amount of talk about other wireless networks like Woosh and Wired Country there. Most of the discussion occurs in the forums, there are a number of people involved in Wired Country in some way there (the mailing list is 'dead' at the moment and is intended for more 'on-topic' discussions anyway).

http://www.nzwireless.org/forums.html especially http://www.nzwireless.org/forum4.htm

One good thing I've been hearing is take up has been very good which means they're got incentive to expand (although they also have to spend more time taking care of existing customers, at least they're not likely to die)

 
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Received on Thu Jul 29 01:21:23 2004