Wireless Broadband – Better than DSL?
Wireless is wonderful technology. Whether speaking of WiFi for local area networks or wireless broadband for internet, the technology and usefulness keeps getting better.
Nonetheless, I usually tell people that wireless is great but a cable is always better. Now, I have been a proponent of wireless since before the turn of the century (sounds weird to use that phrase, meant something totally different to me when I was growing up). In fact, I saw Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom fame – now of prison fame – deliver the keynote address at the WCA convention in New Orleans in Summer 2000. What a pompous jerk, and a poor choice for keynote speaker, but I digress.
But a recent incident with one of my clients has me rethinking the advantages a partner of mine and I were telling potential investors years ago. Wireless makes a great broadband connection, but also a fantastic backup to a wired connection.
Enter the backhoe. On a stretch of roadway so known for water main breaks it defies all logic why the city, while replacing almost all of the roadway, doesn’t go ahead and replace all of the water manes at the same time. (Job security for later?)
Thursday morning a water main breaks. Shortly thereafter a city employee, who apparently doesn’t have to call J.U.L.I.E to mark utilities before digging, cuts through a primary telephone line artery. Because my client has a fractional T-1, their internet actually has priority over the phone lines. Friday around noon, the internet comes back up. Late Friday, some phone lines are operational.
Since everything is soaked, the repairs take longer and their are spotty problems at least through Monday night. Tuesday morning and now everything appears back to normal. If they had Wireless broadband, possibly with VoIP phones? Only the bathrooms would have been out of service.
