Category Archives: Internet access speed

SPLOST VII campaign kicks off

Update 2012-09-27 8:50AM: Added video, stills, and notes about the County Palace and Internet access.
The seventh Special Local Option Sales Tax, SPLOST, will be on the November ballot. Not to be confused with the just-defeated bogus regional transportation T-SPLOST, or last year’s successful educational ESPLOST, or the currently renegotiating property-tax-relief LOST, SPLOST Campaign SPLOST VII will follow up on SPLOST VI in supporting local infrastructure projects.

Greg Gullberg reported for WCTV today, Campaign Kicks Off For Valdosta Tax (no video appears to be available): The text story link has vanished, but video has appeared.

There is a campaign in Lowndes County to rally for the tax called SPLOST, or the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. It could bring in as much as $35 million, but that is only if voters say it’s worth the extra pennies.

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Industrial Authority goes solar, broadband, and conversational!

The Industrial Authority apparently listened to its focus groups, and discovered that broadband and solar energy are important to attract industry. Andrea Schruijer even recommends conversation, which has been sorely lacking in recent years. Congratulations, Industrial Authority!

Jason Schaefer wrote for the VDT today, Authority analyzes Valdosta business: Broadband, solar power, professional services targeted for growth,

The Authority also plans to work toward the availability of more broadband Internet service and solar power in Valdosta and surrounding communities. These amenities would help support local industries as well as draw new ones to the greater Valdosta area for the creation of new jobs.

That’s a good start. Although it’s not clear from the writeup that VLCIA quite got it about Internet access.

As part of presenting Valdosta as an attractive package for prospective industries, the Authority attempts to ready the land set aside for development before beginning the recruitment process. This means investing in infrastructure, including broadband internet.

“It’s not that we don’t have broadband,” Schruijer said. “What we’re looking at is the technology behind the broadband. We have it in certain areas, but in order for us to grow some of these core targets, such as professional services, we need that infrastructure.”

Well, actually, no, we don’t have broadband. 6Mbps is the fastest most people can get around here, and 30Mbps is the slowest you can even buy in many countries. Plus, it’s not just fast Internet to industrial sites that’s needed: it’s fast Internet access everywhere knowledge-based employees may want to live.

But they’re on the right track:

Because the Authority can’t “buy” industries into coming to Valdosta—though it can offer tax abatements—it is necessary to make sure that new businesses have what they will need before ground is even broken, Schruijer said. To this effect, the Authority will “stimulate the conversation” to actively attract more broadband companies to the area.

A conversation! Now there’s something we’ve been needing around here. And it’s a refreshing change from only a year ago when all we heard was

“Debate is not allowed.”

Maybe the Industrial Authority will be the organization that will show the rest of us how to hold civil discussions about things that affect all of us!

The VDT’s writeup skips quickly over another big change:

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VZ 4G vs. AT&T DSL, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2012-09-08

It turns out you can’t yet buy Verizon’s HomeFusion Broadband 4G wireless Internet service

in Georgia. (You can buy it in Tennessee.) However, in Georgia, you can buy one of several 4G LTE devices that have most of the same capabilities. For example, I have here a Verizon Jetpack™ 4G LTE Mobile Hotspot MiFi©, which is about the size of a pack of cards. A few minutes ago I compared its speeds directly with AT&T 3Mbps DSL. Here are the results.

The MiFi I’ve got is a slightly older model of the one pictured above, because for years

AT&T DSL: 2.66Mbps down 0.31Mbps up
AT&T DSL
VZ 4G: 10.88Mbps down 7.14Mbps up
Verizon 4G
I’ve been using it and its predecessors on road trips, for Skype, web browsing, blog posting, etc. It’s also come in very handy as a plan B home Internet access method on the many occassions when AT&T’s DSL has flaked out. Mostly I did not use it for uploading videos or watching them much, because until recently it was relatively slow, using EVDO technology at about 1Mbps down and 0.7Mbps up. Suddenly, the MiFi has gotten much much faster, ten times faster, because Verizon has turned on their 4G LTE service in Lowndes County, at least for mobile access.

The tables show results using SpeakEasy Speedtest a few minutes ago.

Megabytes/secMegabits/sec
downup downup
AT&T DSL 2.66Mbps 0.31Mbps 322KB/sec 38KB/sec
Verizon 4G 10.88Mbps 7.14Mbps 1360KB/sec 893KB/sec

Verizon’s 4G LTE is way faster, as in Continue reading →

4G data caps and prices

It may be fast, but there are some drawbacks to 4G wireless Internet access, namely data limits and significant prices. Here’s Verizon’s table for their HomeFusion Broadband.

Monthly Data Allowance Monthly Access
10GB $60
20GB $90
30GB $120

I would bet the other companies’ caps and prices are pretty much the same. For web browsing, you’ll probably never run over that lowest 10GB/month limit. So if you want to tweet or facebook or tumblr or email with your friends, 4G probably will work fine for you.

If you do a lot of Skype or listening to music over the net, you might run over. If you watch a lot of videos, or you want to do video conferencing, you can definitely run over. Here’s Verizon’s table of estimates, and they have a calculator along with that:

Email (Text Only) = 10 KB
Typical Web Page Lookup* = 1MB
Audio Streaming = 51 MB/hr
Video Streaming (Standard Def) = 500MB/hr
Video Streaming (HIgh Def) = 1.6GB/hr
Digital Photo Download/Upload (Hi-Res) = 5 MB
4G VoIP = 67MB/hr
4G VoIP with Video = 254MB/hr

1 MB = 1,024KB
1 GB = 1,024MB

Videos of a single VLCIA meeting can run 2 gigabytes, and there are lots of other meetings going on around here. Not every local elected or appointed board has 5 minute meetings like the Lowndes County Commission. Many run for an hour or more.

Even though I’m a pretty intensive Internet user, I’m considering getting 4G home service. Someday AT&T may get around to running fiber for their uverse service out here in my sparsely populated area of the county, and then we might be able to get 3-24Mbps down (and unknown speeds up) for $38 to $63/month. Some year. Or never, if wireless speeds continue to leapfrog even fiber speeds. OK, real fiber speeds such as in Finland, Japan, France, Korea, or dozens of other countries are 100Mbps or up, but U.S. telcos and cablecos are not going to offer speeds like that until they’ve milked every penny they can get out of slower speeds first. Not to mention what the U.S. carriers are really selling with fiber is TV, which is a dying broadcast medium, fast being left in the dust by the participatory social Internet. Who do you know under 30 who gets their news from TV anymore?

Anyway, I don’t know whether 4G Internet service would work for you, but at least it’s another option.

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4G wireless Internet speeds

How fast is 4G wireless Internet, anyway? Mark Sullivan wrote for PCWorld 7 May 2012, 3G/4G Performance Map: Data Speeds for AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon,

We saw three major patterns in our 4G test results. In five cities (Atlanta, Boston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco), AT&T swept the 4G upload and download competitions; in four (Denver, New Orleans, San Jose, and Seattle), Verizon swept both; and in the remaining four (Chicago, Dallas, New York, and Washington, D.C.), AT&T won for downloads and Verizon prevailed for uploads. Notably, in two of the cities where Verizon ruled (Denver and Seattle), AT&T doesn’t offer 4G LTE service.

And you’ll notice a pattern right away: they only tested big cities. So your mileage may vary around here. However, PCWorld’s observed average 4G speeds for Verizon were 7.35 Mbps down and 5.86Mbps up, and for AT&T 9.12Mbps down and 4.91Mpgs up. Verizon’s HomeFusion Broadband web page claims:

HomeFusion Broadband* is a residential Internet solution that uses Verizon’s 4G LTE network to bring reliable, high-speed Internet service to customers with limited broadband options.

Features

  • Fast Internet access with average speeds of 5-12 Mbps download and 2-5 Mbps upload
  • Wi-Fi connectivity for up to 20 devices
  • Wired (Ethernet) connectivity for up to 4 devices
  • Up to 5 email accounts included

That’s faster than Mediacom and way faster than AT&T’s alleged 3Mbps DSL I’m using at the moment, which shows 3.5Mbps down and 0.38Mbps up. Prices start at $60/month, the same as for Verizon’s Mobile Broadband 5G, which with EVDO typically does around 1Mbps down and 0.7Mbps up and with 4G typically does 5Mbps down and 3Mbps up.

Why do these speeds matter? Well, for video blogging, videos of a one hour meeting can take 8 hours to upload at 0.38 Mbps. At 5Mbps they should take less than an hour. That makes it a lot easier for LAKE to get you coverage of local events.

If you’re not video blogging, you still might like to be able to see George Rhynes’ excellent video coverage of events in Lowndes, Brooks, Lanier, and other counties. And nevermind video: a lot of people around here have no Internet access at all. This would be one way to get it. Some people around here already use Verizon’s mobile devices at home, because otherwise they’re stuck with dialup.

Then there’s reliability. I, for one, would like not to see ATM Cell Header Errors anymore, nor the “page not found, retry?” errors every few minutes. If you don’t know what those are, you probably don’t have AT&T DSL. It’s sad that wireless might be more reliable than copper. But I’m also glad about that because wireless doesn’t require running wires. And did I mention 4G wireless appears to be faster?

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Verizon or AT&T 4G in Lowndes County?

Maybe one solution to county-wide fast Internet access is 4G wireless? According to their online coverage maps, both AT&T and Verizon now offer 4G in Valdosta and almost all of Lowndes County and many surrounding counties.

IT News Online PRNewswire 15 August 2012 Verizon Wireless Introducing High-Speed 4G LTE Data Network In Valdosta,

ALPHARETTA, Ga., Aug. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Verizon Wireless customers will be able to experience the blazing fast speeds and Verizon 4G coverage map capabilities of the company’s 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in Valdosta when the service launches there on Thursday, Aug. 16. The introduction of the company’s 4G LTE network is part of Verizon Wireless’ announcement today introducing its 4G LTE network in 34 new markets, including Valdosta, and expansion in 38 other markets. The nation’s largest 4G LTE network will be available in a total of 371 markets and cover more than 75 percent of the U.S. population, including major metropolitan areas, small cities and many suburbs.

Customers who live in or visit areas including Valdosta, Lake Park, Hahira, Morven, Moody Air Force Base as well as along I-75 from Lake Park to Hahira and along State Road 125 from Moody Air Force Base to Barretts now will have access to the nation’s fastest 4G network.

Verizon’s 4G coverage map does seem to indicate the same thing.

AT&T 4G coverage map I see no announcement from AT&T, but their online map does indicate coverage here. My AT&T Android phone has a 4G light that sometimes lights up in Valdosta, but I sure don’t see it out here on the edge of the county. Maybe they just haven’t gotten to it here.

Sprint and T-Mobile do not seem to offer 4G around here. Still, 2 out of 4 would be more choice than we’ve had before.

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“It’s almost like they are out to take advantage of the rubes,” —an economist

Do big box stores count as development? Are they worth millions in tax incentives and bond investments? Maybe we can find something better for local industry and jobs.

Rumors have been flying for years about a Bass Pro store coming to Valdosta, like this one on a Georgia Outdoor News forum:

01-22-2008, 09:05 PM, bear-229
ive heard the land has been bought. very close to the new toyota lot but it has not made it to the “new locations” on the web site

That’s on James Road, in that huge proposed development that Lowndes County approved around that time.

Scott Reeder wrote for The Atlantic 13 August 2012, Why Have So Many Cities and Towns Given Away So Much Money to Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s?,

Both Bass Pro Shops and its archrival, Cabela’s, sell hunting and fishing gear in cathedral-like stores featuring taxidermied wildlife, gigantic fresh-water aquarium exhibits and elaborate outdoor reproductions within the stores. The stores are billed as job generators by both companies when they are fishing for development dollars. But the firms’ economic benefits are minimal and costs to taxpayers are great.

An exhaustive investigation conducted by the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity found that the two competing firms together have received or are promised more than $2.2 billion from American taxpayers over the past 15 years.

Where does all that money come from? Bonds, usually. Which is yet another reason why last legislature’s HB 475 to give unelected bodies bond issuing privatizing power would be a bad idea.

What does all that money go for?

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Internet speed and access —John S. Quarterman @ LCC 2012-05-08

At a recent Lowndes County Commission meeting, I said:

I was interested to learn two weeks ago that my neighbor Timothy Nessmith was interested in getting DSL on Hambrick Road.

He said you can get it as close to him as Quarterman Road. I can attest to that because I have 3 megabit per second DSL, due to being just close enough to Bellsouth’s DSL box on Cat Creek Road, but most of Quarterman Road can’t get DSL due to distance. There are some other land-line possibilties, involving cables in the ground or wires on poles.

Then there are wireless possibilities, including EVDO, available from Verizon, with 750 kilobit per second (0.75 Mbps) wide area access from cell phone towers.

Verizon’s towers could also be used for WIFI antennas, for up to 8 Mbps Internet access, over a wide scale.

Then there’s metropolitan-area Internet. Chattanooga has the fastest such network, with 1 Gbps (1,000 Mbps). But hundreds of communities around the country have such networks, including (continued after the video)…

Internet speed and access —John S. Quarterman
Regular Session, Lowndes County Commission (LCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 8 May 2012.
Video by Gretchen Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE).

…Lafayette, Louisiana, Bowling Green, Kentucky, Lagrange, Georgia, and Thomasville, Georgia. They use it for public safety, education (Wiregrass Tech, VSU), and

It attracts new industry. If you want knowledge-based industry, they’re going to be expecting Internet access not just at work, but at home, whereever they live.

Other uses include Continue reading →

Get Bellsouth to supply DSL on Hambrick Road —Timothy Nessmith @ LCC 2012-04-24

DSL in Lowndes County for fast Internet access? County Commission Chairman Ashley Paulk passed the buck on citizen Timothy Nesmith’s question about that, at the 24 April 2012 Regular Session of the Lowndes County Commission.

Chairman Paulk violated the Commission’s own Policies and Procedures for Citizens Wishing to be Heard by saying Timothy Nessmith didn’t get a chance to fill out the appropriate form, but he was welcome to speak anyway. Now I think that’s a silly rule, and if the Chairman is going to waive it for one person, they might as well revoke it for all citizens so nobody has to sign up.

Nessmith wanted the Commission to pressure BellSouth to provide DSL on Hambrick Road.

Chairman Paulk chose to answer that by saying it was a Public Service Commission issue, and adding that due to housing density on that road “they [presumably the telephone company] can’t make it work economically.”

Like my neighbor Chairman Paulk, I know Nessmith’s neighborhood (Nessmith lives around the corner from me, although I had no idea he was going to speak, and have never discussed his issue with him). Later I will post some things the Commission could do.

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100 broadband municipal networks: where’s ours?

Instead of arbitrating a fixed-size LOST pie, what if Lowndes County and the local cities worked on increasing the size of the pie through broadband? It’s not just Chattanooga, 100 other municipalities have done it.

Christopher Mitchell wrote for Planetizen 30 April 2012, Should Your City Build Its Own Broadband Network?

Chattanooga is not alone; more than 100 cities and towns have built their own broadband networks. The city of Lafayette, Louisiana offers probably the best deal for broadband in the nation: ten megabits symmetrical for less than $30/month. For non-geek readers, it is actually faster than my home Comcast connection at less than half the price. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance has just released a new report detailing how Chattanooga and Lafayette built their networks.

Hm, Valdosta and Lowndes County don’t seem to be on that map. Yet. We don’t have to wait for VLCIA to organize this; there are other ways.

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