[ILUG] Mobile Broadband under Linux

[Brendan Minish]

On Mon, 2008-04-07 at 02:05 +0100, Luke Ashe-Browne wrote:

> >   
> I'm not sure if it suits your needs, but the guy who runs "westnet" was 
> at the lug meeting the last day. 

You have promoted me! I am chief nerd and a director 


> Does over the air stuff. Maybe not in 
> the price range your looking for, but maybe worth a look.

Our coverage area is predominantly Mayo and I think the original
poster's question was for galway. In rural Gawlay speak to lighthouse
networks 

We don't as a rule do part time connections, we did in the beginning but
our accountant gave us a 'right bollocking' about it .
basically the issue with part time subscriptions for holiday home and
the like is this.
Our install charge (which is already about as high as the current market
will bear. ) only covers part of the hardware costs and none of the of
the labor. this means that if we do part time rental our time taken to
beak even on a customer is greatly extended. 
Anther, not  insignificant factor is that the CPE equipment just is more
reliable if left on 24/7 as warm+dry is better than cold+damp where
these things are concerned! 

I do use a 3g solution when out and about. Mine is with Voda and I get
3g in most urban areas, in rural areas it's GPRS (and crap).

However for the adventurous I would suspect that if you are not actually
in a hole you may well have good luck with 3g IF you can use a high gain
antenna outside, in the clear and pointed at the base station, even in
situations where Line of site is not available however you may need to
experiments with a ladder and a 3g handset first to see which operator
has the best possibility of 3g in the area since coverage maps in the
rural areas are largely the figment of someones active imagination.

the problem for absolutely everyone bar eircom is the very high costs of
transit within ireland ..

Regards
Brendan Minish