[Discuss] Saltspring?

[Bob Stuart]

Alan Wardroper wrote:
> Just wondering if any of you are living/have lived on Saltspring island?
> How's internet access over there? I see imagen and telus adsl -- at 1.5 
> megs
> with low data transfer limits. There's wireless through GI, which looks
> quite fast but is expensive and they have low caps on bandwidth too.
> Does Shaw run cable over there? Any other options?
> (right now I have Shaw at 5 megs resold through another provider fo a 
> better
> price than Shaw, and it's always difficult to downgrade service so a cut to
> 1.5 meg would hurt).
> 
> Thanks
> 
I've been here for 11 years, and have worked up from 1.2 kbs to 28.8 for 
a location beyond the 4km limit for ADSL from Ganges.  Now I'm getting 
the full speed from my modem for the 1st time, visiting near town before 
heading off for parts unknown.  Accelerated dial-up is pretty picky 
about the software.  I'm currently running about 50% failures dialing 
up, and maybe 23 hours of service available per day. The outages are 
seldom more than a few hours; often much less. The outages have been 
fairly constant, the dialup troubles are worse here, probably because 
the line is shared with a Telus cable, which seems very reliable and 
fine for browsing, but may be what is making the phone service flaky.

Imagen was out of service for most of Jan 1&2 without even changing the 
message on their answering machine - they seem  to have changed hands 
once too many times.  The local staff are good when they are in, but 
head office just wants your money.  The wireless services require line 
of sight to their transmitters, and don't beam between islands, which is 
what most sight lines are optimized for here.

Best,
Bob Stuart.

The large print giveth,
and the small print taketh away.

John Prine, "Step Right Up"



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