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0 pointssandworm1017y ago0 comments

Egmont BC. Only 80km (50 miles) from Vancouver. Not exactly remote by Canada or even British Columbia standards. It is also only 79km from Whistler, but look at what stands between Egmont and whistler to get an idea BC terrain.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Egmont,+BC+V0N+2H4/@49.750...

I've looked into every option. The irony is that the nearest cell tower is just over a kilometer away. The problem is the rocky terrain and dense pacific coastal rain forest. Trees heavy with water droplets suck up everything, from sound to radio. It is shocking how a heavy mist dulls everyone's cellphone boosters. Voice calls only last a second or two even on dry days. Everyone uses text messaging.

There have been many multipoint proposals. The problem is the rugged coast. Even a 1000' tower wouldn't have line of sight to every house. It would take all sorts of relays atop individual hills. And those relays need power, which is tricky. Buried lines aren't an option (rock) and towers are expensive (forest).

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walrus017y ago

Yeah, that is going to be a hard location to reach. Took a look at it from Google Earth / satellite view for a few minutes. The best option I can realistically think of is for a group of 7 to 20 people to share the cost for a larger, much more serious geostationary vsat terminal (not some xplornet consumer grade stuff), like a 2.4 meter ku-band dish with 20W BUC and modern iDirect modem, and find a vsat ISP with ku band spot coverage of the area to pay for access.

You'd be looking at like $800 a month for a better chunk of bandwidth. Then divide that by the number of local users in the Egmont town are you can connect through it, building a very small micropop WISP setup. Something like a mimosa a5c on a pole in a central location and c5c CPE radios with 24-30dB gain dishes on the client side. And a small mikrotik router between the mimosa and the vsat modem.

Divided by enough people it could work out to around $80-100 per residence per month. This assumes that somebody with a modicum of networking clue can run the local end for free, a few hours a week for maintenance and monitoring.

sandworm101OP7y ago

Yup. Thanks for looking. Getting everyone on board with a 10 to 20-house collective would be very hard. The terrain is really unforgiving. All the houses are by the water, with steep rocky hills behind them. Any maintenance is a big issue. That "somebody with a modicum of networking clue" doesn't live in Egmont.

Atm my parents are paying 100/month for sat internet, and another 50 for sat TV. It suits their needs today but they know that when the grandkids are a little older bandwidth will be an issue. When I visit I bring them thumbdrives full of all TV shows they cannot get.

walrus017y ago

The other best possible option would be a single access point, somewhat up on a hill, possibly mounted to a tree with TV white space radio gear, just across the water from Egmont, with sector antennas aimed at the town. Redline and a few others have commercial TVWS band access point radios for the 500 to 800 MHz bands (various models available) which can cut through trees for non line of sight radio pretty effectively. You'd still need to get some kind of semi-decent dedicated broadband connection to the AP site, such as a 20 Mbps x 20 Mbps to Telus in Sechelt or Gibsons.

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0 pointssandworm1017y ago0 comments

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Egmont,+BC+V0N+2H4/@49.750...

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walrus017y ago

sandworm101OP7y ago

walrus017y ago

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