Canopy: my broadband savior?

moogs

Anyone here a subscriber to the Motorola-based Canopy wireless internet service? Uses cell towers towers to send bandwidth up to 6gb/s to local home owners, as long as it's line-of-site. Mac-compatible, and if you have a good enough line of site, no antenna on your home. Just set it in front of the window! Prices are supposed to be in line with dial-up (around $20). Pay yearly subscription, no termination fee. I am totally stoked about this possibility.



I would actually have *better* bandwidth than either cable or DSL, at half the cost, and with zero installation hassle because you just set up the Network protocol in system prefs, plug the cable into your ether-port and go.

paul

link...?

fellowship

Quote:

Originally posted by Moogs

Anyone here a subscriber to the Motorola-based Canopy wireless internet service? Uses cell towers towers to send bandwidth up to 6gb/s to local home owners, as long as it's line-of-site. Mac-compatible, and if you have a good enough line of site, no antenna on your home. Just set it in front of the window! Prices are supposed to be in line with dial-up (around $20). Pay yearly subscription, no termination fee. I am totally stoked about this possibility.



I would actually have *better* bandwidth than either cable or DSL, at half the cost, and with zero installation hassle because you just set up the Network protocol in system prefs, plug the cable into your ether-port and go.

Sounds GREAT!

ghost_user_name

From what I hear its not that robust. Line of site is to be taken very literally. Fog and rain doesn´t do well with this.



Licenses was given to some of the mobile companies here but none managed to make it work. And thats despite the fact yo can´t spit without hitting a mobile phone cell mast here.



Now its mostly used for internet connections for residential LANs for 30-100 users. One robust link that connects to the LAN.



Notice this is technology based on 802.11. Perhaps Canopy is based on something else?

moogs

MMDS maybe? I am reasonbly sure it's not based on 802.11 protocols based on the bandwidth alone -- at least none of the 802.11 protocols I am aware of, G in included. In fact it mentions 802.11 specifically as a comparison technology.



Luckily for me I have absolutely nothing between my window and the parts of the towers where the cell / internet equipment is housed. I'd say the one tower is about 400 ft. high and maybe a half mile or slight more away; it's pretty huge really. A bit of an eye-sore until now, if you take my meaning.



Here's a link for the service I was looking at.



http://www.theramp.net/wireless/index.html#avl



[Edit - found a Powerpoint web presentation that indicated prices might be somewhere closer to $40, but that's not bad because I would basically get rid of my land line all together anyway, which is about $30. I only use it for dial-up, not talking, sooo...]

moogs

Holy Moses. It appears...after THREE YEARS of trying to get our telco and cable companies to supply our townhome neighborhood with broadband...that Canpopy IS available right here in River City! I am stoked. That's the good news. The bad news: they don't use the massive 400 ft tower I have line-of-site to. They use one that's about 1.25 miles down the road and not line of site. Ergo, receiver on the roof, wire into the attic, etc. $99.



Was hoping to forgo that part but oh well. This is very cool if it works out. Keep your fingers crossed, home boyz.

ena

hubba-hubba !!!







I'd mount an antenna on my head for 6gb/s.

moogs

Indeed. I don't know at this range that I'll get the full 6Gb/s, but even it it's only 3, that's still twice as good as most cable or DSL connections AFAICT. The pricing ranges from about $40 to $60, so that may be the determining factor. The cut out a slice of the bandwidth from any particular tower for you and assign it to your account, so maybe the more you pay, the stronger the signal?



I'll find out and post more as I get the info.

moogs

Well, goes to show you never to believe marketing hype. 6gb/s is possible, but only if the tower you're pulling from has a T3 line (based on what I can tell). My tower has dual T-1 lines and about 100 users on it. That should get me between 1 and 1.5 Gb/s during non-peak hours, between .5 and 1 after work and on weekends I suppose.



Not nearly what I had hoped for but still a helluva lot better than 56k. I'm going to can my phone service after using it for a week or so assuming everything works well. There is a $99 install fee and a $99 refundable deposit. You pay monthly, quarterly or yearly. The monthly breakdown amount depends on the length of overall service.



I'll be getting it on Wednesday evening so I'll keep you guys posted. Who knows, it may not even take because of line-of-site issues. It's definitely not a Wi-Fi technology though because it is not susceptible to rain or snow. Weather only knocks the system down when it damages the tower basically. I'd say the odds that it will work with a powerful-good signal are about 40/60 against me based on my geographical location and surroundings but it's worth a try.



There are 5 other people in my complex who have ordered it and are up and running apparently, but I'm further from the tower than all of them. Geographically about the same though in terms of "altitude" relative to the tower.

moogs

As that dork from the Sam Adams Light commercial says



"Boooooo YAHHHHHH!"



I am now under the Canopy so to speak. The install was a bit of a pain, but the speeds are decent. Every web page I hit is almost instantaneous, and even the medium grade QT movies stream in without requiring rebuffering. I can now watch Steve-notes in style! Truly, all my dreams are now fulfilled...



Well, not really, more bandwidth is on its way into the system. I should be close to 2Mb/s within a month *knocks on wood*. We shall see.