Rural Internet Woes: Stupid Aircards!

Wooooo! I’m ready to let out a Howard Dean scream like my favorite jacked Gingah!

Finally. I have high speed internet again.

I have been relying on an aircard that goes into the USB port. My Compass 597 Aircard from Telus works pretty good in town. Out here in the sticks, I was getting only one bar. According to their customer service, that is “plenty for full speed downloads”. It isn’t, unless they were refering to the blistering full speeds of dialup. The signal would drop right at the most inopportune times as well, such as just after typing in a post and pushing the publish button, or right after typing in an email reply and hitting the send button. And after about half an hour, the aircard starts getting pretty warm. Then nothing works anymore.

I was forced to sign a one year contract for this aircard. I’m glad it wasn’t a three year deal.

I also had a Rogers Rocketstick aircard before the Compass, and it was even worse.Fortunately, I was able to return that one for free. You really can’t beat Rogers customer service, I’ll give them that.

Yesterday, a helpful young guy named Robert came by and installed a Galaxy Broadband satellite dish. So far, it seems to be working pretty well. Satellite internet isn’t super fast, but it’s faster than my aircard is in a full service area. In other words, compared to what I’ve been using, it is da bomb, baby.

I actually watched a Youtube video! I know! Amazing. Later, I think I’m gonna dowload a couple of those pesky updates that have been stacking up. With pages loading faster, I might visit a few sites that were downloading too slow for me to bother with.

The only thing I have to watch out for, is on the plan we are on, there is a maximum 300MB per day download policy. That’s right, the dowwnload police could shut me down for a few hours. I’m sure the kids will set that one off eventually.

November 27, 2009 | | Tags: , , , | 38 Comments »

The Rocket Stick – Rogers Air Cards

Here we go again. The ongoing saga of how in the heck do I get reliable internet service with an air card like the Rogers Rocket Stick. This little device worked great for me in the populated areas of the world. Out on the edges of cell service, not so much. I almost want to move closer to civilization, just to get reliable internet service.

I’ve been pulling out hair since I have all this stuff I wanted to do online, and no way to get on the internet with my laptop. Email piling up, plans going on the back burner, argghh!! And those endless phone calls to Xplornet Satellite internet services so that I can be put on hold for an hour, only for them to explain to me once again how my not having internet service is not their fault.

I do have to say that the Rogers customer service was excellent, friendly, knowledgable, and all around excellent. What a contrast to Xplornet. They even let me try the Rocket Stick with a 30 day no questions asked return policy. Try to find that from Telus or Bell. Not likely Bubba. With the other two companies, you sign the contract and you are in it for the long haul. The 30 day return policy came in pretty handy for me, since I did end up handing it back over to them. It just plain didn’t work at my house. My cell phone works there, but nothing from the air card. It was rather frustrating really.

When I took back the Rocket Stick, I wanted to get a Bell USB air card but no one in Red Deer had them in stock. That was how I ended up getting a Sierra Compass 597 Air Card from Telus instead. My wife did later get an aircard from Bell, which worked great in our rural home, at first. Now it has troubles connecting to her PC laptop. Something to do with the drivers working with the newer 64 bit laptops or some such technobabble. It still works great with my mac.

April 20, 2009 | | Tags: , , , | 48 Comments »