Fractals of Change

Heads in the Sand

"Please, don't buy my product" is how fellow Vermonter Art Woolf, in a post on the Vermont Tiger site,  characterized yesterday's statement by all 21 of the state's electric utilities. The utilities were warning consumers NOT to substitute electricity for fossil fuel as a heat source this winter even though we may be billed less for the electricity than we would have to pay for gasoline, propane, or kerosene. The coverage of that strange statement including a lead story on WCAX probably did more for space heater sales than a paid advertising campaign would have.

As I've been posting (probably ad nauseum), electricity at $.15/kWh is a cheaper way to heat house than oil at $5.00/gallon. Since an electric space heater costs $20 (according to the WCAX story), this is a switch that many people will make at current prices and will make en masse if the price of oil continues to climb AND ELECTRIC RATES REMAIN UNCHANGED. (NOTE: check your local tariff, some towns including Stowe, VT have penalty rates which could kick in and more than negate savings). Jawboning against the switch will only encourage more people to do it – they have to look out for their families this winter.

The utilities DO have two legitimate problems:

1. Current rates encourage us to use electricity for heating onpeak as well as off. The cost to the utilities will skyrocket if they have to add massive amounts offpeak purchased power to their supply. Since onpeak power is produced by burning fossil fuels (NOT including much coal here in the Northeast), it's expensive. Current electric rates make onpeak residential use a loss leader: the more of it the utilities sell, the more they'll lose. Even worse, prices in the spot market for wholesale electricity literally change every minute. A growth in demand without a growth in supply will drive the unit cost up – perhaps drastically.  The utilities response will predictably and necessarily be to ask for rate increases.
2. There is not enough electrical transmission everywhere in Vermont to deliver a significant increase in peak load.

Fortunately there is an option besides jawboning but it's hard and has to be planned quickly. We need to go to time-of-day pricing for residential electricity everywhere in Vermont. It must be mandatory – at least for those who use more than a certain amount of electricity per month. There must be a provision to change which times of day are peak and offpeak with fairly short notice as demand fluctuates. Towns with a totally inadequate supply will have to protect themselves with very high peak rates.

The huge job includes installing time-of-day meters which may not be very smart meters meaning they themselves will be replaced and scrapped in not too many years. There are regulatory changes required – not something that usually happens fast. the whole effort MAY be premature if the price of oil comes back down (which it may).

Fortunately electric heat is not all or nothing if you already own a furnace. Even if rates only encourage electric heat at night, you still save money on fuel. Moreover, time-of-day rates give you the option of saving on other discretionary electric use during the day and saving money by doing so.

Time-of-day rates align the interest of the power producers and power consumers; that's a good thing. Utilities can be more profitable (or charge less) if peaks are smoothed out. New facilities are more quickly paid for if they serve more than peak needs.

Burying our heads in the sand and hoping that people will voluntarily buy more expensive oil to prevent FUTURE electric rate increases is not a good thing. It won't work; the utilities are perfectly right to predict problems this winter WITH THE CURRENT rate structure. The rate structure needs to be changed.

Vermont Files in Support of Using White Space for Mobile Broadband Access

The Vermont Public Service Department and the Vermont Telecommunications Authority have joined in an ex parte filing at the Federal Communications Commission urging that the Commission “move expeditiously to adopt the necessary technical parameters … and help make this promising technology [use of the so-called ‘TV whitespaces’] a reality.” Given that the docket has been open since May of 2004, a little expeditiousness is certainly in order.

“TV white spaces” is the term used by the FCC but it’s a misnomer; no broadcaster has actually paid for any of the spectrum at issue; no one is using it; in short; it’s wasted. Originally, before cable and satellite TV and before the Internet, it was reasonably believed that this spectrum would eventually be occupied by a proliferation of over-the-air stations. That’s not gonna happen. Vermont has as much radio spectrum “reserved” for over-the-air TV stations as New York City – 50 channels worth. That “reserved” spectrum is not of any use to anyone and won’t be until the FCC promulgates some rules for its use.

The filing explains the many reasons why this spectrum is ideally suited to meeting the needs or rural America for much better broadband and cellular coverage:

“First, rural areas like Vermont have relatively fewer TV broadcasters and therefore more unused ‘white spaces.’ Moreover, rural communities also have the largest geographic areas without access to wireless services. Second, the ability of TV frequencies to propagate over great distances and difficult terrain provides an opportunity to reach locations too economically challenging for existing wireless services. Third, the use of TV ‘white space’ for the provision of rural broadband is an alternative means of accomplishing the Commission’s universal service goal of deploying advanced services to all areas of the nation without requiring additional funding mechanisms. In fact, the use of TV ‘white space’ could actually decrease the demand for universal service funding at a time when the level of funding is facing heightened scrutiny.”

The filing makes clear that the petitioners do NOT think that this spectrum should be auctioned off at a high price. The greatest public good will come from making these public resources available “at low or no-cost to those entities willing to utilize them for such purpose [broadband and mobile access].”

It will take the concentrated political power of rural America to free up this spectrum to meet the rural need for better communication. But this isn’t urban vs. rural; urban areas also have something to gain from better spectrum availability and nothing to lose.

Not to over-dramatize but I see this as the public interest vs. entrenched communications interests. The TV industry would like to sit on this spectrum without paying for it “just in case”; they also may be worried about Internet use of the spectrum becoming a competing “channel” for delivering entertainment. Traditional communications carriers benefit from LACK of competition in the US broadband market; they have no reason to want to see competition growing like weeds (or, more accurately, like WiFi) in fields of open spectrum.

Google and other “Internet” companies do have an interest in keeping their paths to the consumer unblocked; competition would be good for that. This post is about a proposal Google has made for putting the unused white space to work.

Disclosure: My wife, Mary Evslin, is Chair of the Vermont Telecommunications Authority.

The Electric Bill I’ve Been Waiting For

The $9.57 is the monthly service charge. Note that there are NO charges for kilowatt hours because our solar arrays generated more than we used, even late in the Vermont winter. It looks above as if our beginning and ending meter readings were the same; but, I suspect, that’s because the billing software can’t deal with a meter running backwards.

The arrays are now tilted down to their spring position and it’s clear that we’ll be in surplus on a full year basis since we’ll be generating more per day and using less as the days continue to get longer and the sun higher. In Vermont you can’t carry a credit forward more than a year so it’s time to think of ways to use some of that “surplus” electricity and displace some imported fossil fuel.

Plan is to go to geothermal heat. This uses electricity four times as efficiently as electric radiant heat.  Hopefully we can do that by next winter. Savings’ll be lots of oil which I think comes mainly from Venezuela at our location.

The geothermal heat will also provide domestic hot water. Otherwise we’d switch that to electric. Currently the oil furnace is heating that which means it has to be on all summer.

Now feel a little guilty when I use my gas grill since I could be “using the sun” to cook electrically.

In the future hope to be charging a car with some of this solar power. But plugin hybrids aren’t available yet.

BroadbandWiki Beta Begins

Please help test the broadbandwiki project at http://s3.amazonaws.com/broadbandwiki/broadbandwiki.html. There’s no doubt it has bugs and it can certainly be improved. Bug reports and suggestions as comments on this post would be great.

The purpose of the broadbandwiki project, which was built with the GoogleMaps API and stores its database on Amazon’s S3 Service, is to enable Vermonters to help Vermont reach its goal of becoming the first e-state in the nation with both cellular coverage and usable broadband everywhere – which means everywhere – in the State by the end of 2010. However, in the spirit of open source and open competition, I’m happy to make the application available to any state or organization with a similar mission. In fact, I’ll make the code openly available, period, very soon. One problem may be to avoid too many databases soliciting the same information and leading to fragmentation.

The concept of the application is simple. You enter your address, type of Internet access, and provider. The app puts a pin, which is color coded to show your access type, on a map. Once there are enough pins (as there already are in Stowe, Vermont), they are immediately useful for seeing what type of access is available in a neighborhood. They also graphically illustrate where lack of access is a problem for residents and an opportunity for a provider.

Like many Web applications, this database is not really useful until it contains a critical mass of data – at least on a location by location basis. People can – and I hope will – go directly to the site and place their pin. The plan is to have this incorporated soon in the site of the Vermont Telecommunications Authority. It can also be imbedded in or linked to from the sites of the many towns which are taking an active role in providing for their broadband future. But the best way to get this populated will be for other towns to do what Stowe did while we were testing – set up a table at an event where a lot of people come together and get the people to pin their locations on the spot. After one day of work, Stowe’s part of the map reached critical mass.

If you live in Vermont, entries you make in the map are “live” and will be immediately useful. If you don’t live in Vermont, your entry will appear on the map while you are looking at it but you’ll be warned that it’s not really being stored in the database. Either way, I’d appreciate your help both in supplying the data and testing the application.

Thanks.

Top 'o the Mornin' from the Top o' the Hill

Guess which one of us is Irish.

Verizon Wireless Update

Verizon Wireless (VZW) is updating the radios in their cellular sites to support EVDO (cellular broadband) at an impressive rate. My experience with EVDO is that I routinely get download speeds higher than 1 megabit per second and upload speeds of 400-600 kilobits per second (both better than basic DSL). Why they’re not advertising this more is beyond me. I’m giving them a plug here because they are at least a short-term fix for many people in rural areas who, up until now, had no option but satellite (which is a very poor option) for broadband coverage.

Updated interactive coverage maps are available here on the VZW site. If you last looked at these maps a few months ago and didn’t find yourself on them, take another look. BTW, these maps are very granular and so far I’ve found them accurate.

My VZW phone first started showing the presence of EVDO about six months ago both here on nerd hill and at friends’ houses in places as remote as Bear Swamp. But my EVDO card (which has worked well in cities for years) was only connecting at “National Access” speeds here – faster than dialup but not much faster. Tech support assured me that EVDO is here; certainly the map showed our location as blue (covered).

After a while I began to suspect that the problem was the EVDO card I’m using for access. I’ve had it for at least four years; I was a very early EVDO adaptor. So, despite the fact that the card worked in cities and despite tech support telling me that it should then work in Stowe, I ordered a new USB EVDO device – the high end AC595U which has an internal battery to boost its signal strength and a port for an external antenna which I also ordered.  The device turned out to be free if I renewed my contract for two years which I did. Also would’ve been free with a new contract.

Installed the device and new Verizon software that came with it and wham! EVDO Rev. A (a newer version of the protocol which apparently my old card couldn’t cope with). Speeds at least as good as I used to get in the city. And I didn’t need the antenna – at least it doesn’t seem to make any difference.

I’ve been doing a little travelling testing. When Mary and I were doing a broadband census at the High School on Town Meeting day, EVDO gave us the Internet access we needed. Bought my laptop to Bear Swamp yesterday and got blazing speed. I think I’m auditioning to replace the nerd in the VZW commercial who goes around asking “Can you hear me now?” although, of course, I’d ask “Can I connect now?”.

Also have been comparing the VZW coverage map to the map we got when we took our census. Good news and bad news there. Immediately below is some good news. Note that on the census maps the black (satellite) and white (dialup) pins in the Sterling Valley area without any red (DSL) or blue (cable) pins indicate that no broadband coverage is available there.

 

But note from the blue on the VZW coverage map that there apparently IS coverage there although the white does indicate that some areas are blocked by something.

The news is not good in Nebraska Notch. As you can see below, apparently even satellite doesn’t work with the ridge to the south and VZW does not cover there.

The service isn’t cheap. There used to be an unlimited data plan which threatened to reduce your speed if you did more than 5 gigabytes a month of data communication. The plan now allows five gig for the fixed price of $60/month and then charges .49/megabyte (which is expensive) after that. However, if up to now all you had available was dialup or satellite, it’s extremely unlikely you’re doing anything like 5 gig a month or will even want to soon. But don’t try to use this service for looking at full length high-def videos. That’ll cost you an arm and a leg; an occasional YouTube is just fine.

If you already have VZW data access, by all means bring your laptop to Vermont when you come skiing or visiting for any other reason. Very good chance you’ll get connectivity.

There are devices available which let you use one VZW access card and account to provide WiFi coverage to your whole house (or at least a good part of it) so all of your computers can be online without having a separate account for each one of them. I’ll write more about them after I’ve tested.

An earlier post on cellular data access including what other carriers are doing is here.

What I Did on Town Meeting Day

It was just like the old days on the trade show circuit except I finished the software a comfortable twelve hours before show time instead of on the plane coming out.

Mary and I got to the Stowe High School about 7am and set up our booth (really a table) in a great location that everyone had to pass right next to the Girl Scouts and their cookies and on the way to the polls. Mary used to like to get a booth location on the way to the restrooms because of the traffic although I did convince her that some people ought to be left alone until they were on their way out.

She taped her posters to the wall while I fastened my EVDO antenna to the window and set up my computer and the big monitor facing out. Polls were open so we had people coming by immediately. I was supposed to just be there for setup and then go on my way but there was too much traffic for that. Besides Mary never stays in the booth or behind the table; her position is always out in front buttonholing the prospects and this was no different.

“Hi, we’re helping the town committee which is working for better Internet access,” she said. “We’d like to ask you a couple of quick questions .”

“I don’t have anything but dialup,” some people said.

“Great,” she said. “You’re just the people we want to help. What’s your address?”

I’d key in the address if I wasn’t already working with someone else in which case she’d write it down for later inputting. The EVDO connection worked fine and, almost instantly, a new pin white pin (white was for dialup) would appear on the Google map of Stowe on my monitor. “Is that where you live?” I asked.

“Yes,” they’d say. “I hope you can help us get better access.”

“We already have broadband,” some other people said to Mary.

“Great,” she said. “If you tell us where you live, that’ll help us help other people get access.” Their pins would be red for DSL, blue for cable, green for wireless, and orange for cellular (like my EVDO).

Pretty soon the map was well enough filled out (see below) so that we were often able to say “Look at this; your neighbors on both sides seem to have DSL. Maybe you can get it to.”

Sometimes they’d say back “I’ve been calling Verizon every week and they keep telling me not yet even though they send me an ad for DSL with every bill.”

We asked the people who had recently gotten DSL (of which there were quite a few) how they’d managed to get it. Quite a few times the answer was “I was obnoxious” or “I started talking to a technician in a Verizon truck and he told me we could probably get it and helped me out.”

Some people said they had satellite access. We didn’t talk to anyone who liked it; they all wanted something better. They complained about stringent limits on the amount that can be downloaded, slow display of web sites, pathetically slow upload – especially for those with home-based businesses – and not working in rain or snow. But they said it was better than dialup and what else could they do.

Often people told us that they couldn’t find a tenant for an apartment or a buyer for a property because of lack of broadband availability.

If you look at the upper left hand corner of the map, you see no color; only white pins for dialup and black pins for satellite. That’s an affluent area called Robinson Springs; it’s a huge opportunity for some provider despite the fact that the large, expensive houses are spaced out. In the lower left, the string of white dots is Nebraska Valley; not even any satellite, perhaps because mountains obscure the southern sky. It’s a beautiful place to live with great hiking but you can see that cable (blue) didn’t go very far down the road and DSL didn’t make it at all. The telephone poles march down the street; clearly another line needs to hang from them.

You can see how cable and DSL peter out at the end of the roads away from the center of town. “Yeah, they got to my neighbor,” people said about cable; “but they want $10,000 to continue to us.”

Our hope is that the map above and maps like it that people in other towns might fill in will show providers where the opportunities are, help neighbors band together for better service, and help the State Telecommunications Authority (of which Mary is the chair) achieve their mission of 100% cellular and data coverage for Vermont by the end of 2010.

Twelve hours later we broke down our equipment, packed the car, and went home. I hadn’t eaten all day and Mary’d had just a few Girl Scout cookies. It was fun and the software didn’t even crash.

Phew… Made the Deadline

Faithful readers know that I promised Mary to have an app ready for her to beta at town meeting tomorrow to collect information on who has what kind of broadband in Stowe and from whom they get it.

I used the Google maps API to build this. It runs as an application on my laptop rather than as a window in a browser because it’s not until my next project that I figure out what many of you already know – how to configure a server to receive all this information. The survey results are saved as an XML file which can go into Excel and lots of other places.

Took me at least forty hours of work to do this simple app. But that’s not a reflection on the Google tools; it just shows how much I had to learn about many things that working programmers already know. Reversing the usual, the first 10% took 80% of the time; the last 90% was a lot easier because I increasingly knew what I was doing.

I could do a new task with these tools of similar complexity in three or four hours.

BTW, the Google sample code was very helpful and got incorporated wherever I could.

At the last minute it looked like we might not be able to use the app. Town Meeting (oh yeah, and primary day, too) are at the High School. No way at the last minute to get my Internet access through the school. Oh, oh. We went up to the school to test today. Despite the fact that cellphone coverage is marginal there (ask the kids), Verizon EVDO with my new battery-boosted USB modem AND the antenna I bought managed to see a bar or two and that was enough for this to work as long as I don’t put the maps in bandwidth-hungry satellite map view.

Wonder if it’ll crash on its first real outing. Did put lots of care into making sure data will not be lost in that case; I’d be in lots of trouble if that happened.

Nerding Again: It's Hard

I’m back writing code. Despite the fact that I first programmed 45 years ago and used to be a top gun (if I say so myself), it’s hard getting re-started after a 17 year hiatus in which I’ve coded nothing more complex than some VBA in Excel macros and hacked a little HTML and played a little with the OpenSocial APIs .

How I got in trouble is I promised Mary I’d write a little demo app that she could try out at Town Meeting next week and see if it’s a good way for the Vermont Telecommunications Authority (which she chairs) to get people to report on what broadband they actually use. This way the Authority and all Vermonters get a wikiMap that shows what access options really are and aren’t available and what is and isn’t used and it can be kept uptodate. If it works at Town Meeting, then they can package it up and put it on their website.

“It’d be cool,” I said, “to have this all be displayed as pins on a Google map. People should see their pin go on the map when they supply the data. I mean we’ve got to set a good example of the e-state.”

“I’ve got to be able to get the data in spreadsheet form,” Mary said. “Can you get it out that way?”

“Sure.”

Well, it’s all not so easy. My plan was to use Google Mashup Editor. It does a lot of the UI work for you and it runs on Google servers – no worry about scalability. You can even save data on the Google servers.

Nope, that won’t work. The number of entries you can save from your app is too limited even for this application. Moreover, you can’t get the data OFF the Google servers except as you display it in your browser. “Of course,” you experienced young studs’ll say, “all you have to do is talk from your browser code to a server and the server’ll store your data for you. It’s just a little bit of PHP and mySQL and you’re in business ” There’s even an example of that in the Google documentation.

But I don’t have a server and I don’t have time to learn how to set one up and program it in the next week or even learn .NET which might or might not help. Later, if the prototype works and we need to deploy so everyone can use in his or her own browser, then we can make this into a true client-server app.

So here’s the things I had to learn:

• All about how HTML stores things in the DOM (don’t ask if you don’t know).

• Javascript (which isn’t Java, BTW). My last serious programming language was Pascal for the Mac and it WASN’T object-oriented like its successor C++. So I was more than a little weak on all this object model stuff but now I’ve got my classes, objects, methods, properties, functions, and constructors pretty well straightened out.

• How Javascript interacts with the DOM.

• More about XML – it’s the right way to get data into Mary’s spreadsheet and anywhere else we may want to put it.

• The GoogleMaps API.

• How to read and write file in Visual Basic because that’s how I’m going to do it until I have server (I know this’ll only work on Windows but that limitation’ll go away when the server comes).

• How Visual Basic interacts with the DOM.

• A development environment. Writing code in notepad got old quickly. Now I’m using Antechinus Javascript Editor. It’s been helpful so far and has a very good Javascript tutorial with it but I’ve got nothing to compare it to.

• What an “HTA” is. It’s basically code written with web tools like HTML and Javascript that run on your computer like an application. Turns out that’s what the protype’ll be because it has to read and write files on my computer (remember, no server) and browsers don’t, in general, allow code that does that so that malicious web pages won’t steal or destroy local data.

But, despite all my whining, it’s really a lot easier to learn new stuff than it used to be. Everything you need is online so you never don’t have critical documentation. If you Google “xxx tutorial”, you inevitably find several good tutorials on xxx. The ones from W3 Schools are always good; they’re free; and there’s a good sandbox there to play in.

If you Google something like “Read Local Files in Browser”, you find someone on a forum or in a blog who’s answered the question for someone else. That’s how I found about HTAs.

That’s all for now; I’ve got a deadline.

Primary Strategy

In Vermont we get to choose which primary we vote in. It now looks like that choice and how we vote might still make a small difference on Town Meeting Day, March 4, which is when our Democratic and Republican primaries will both take place. It’s an interesting decision for me.

On Friday I was convinced that John McCain (whom I like) had safely wrapped up the Republican nomination. But the Republican nominee could well end up NOT being president, so a vote in the Democratic primary would be a vote for my second choice in case I don’t get my first choice. That seemed like a good strategy, and I’d tentatively decided to vote for Obama although I’ve been put off lately by his preachy generalities without many specifics.

Yesterday results in Kansas and Louisiana, which McCain lost, and even Washington, which McCain has apparently won, made clear that there are a large contingent of Republican primary voters and caucus goers who’d like to keep the party on the evangelical right or have it move even further in that direction. That’s their right but it’s not my preference. Did more moderate GOP voters stay home because the race is “wrapped up”? Have moderates left the GOP so that they no longer vote in its primaries even if they sometimes vote for its candidates in the general election?

It would be an unfortunate result of complacency if moderate Vermont Republicans left the Vermont GOP primary to be won by the right wing minority of the party here. Time for a change in strategy. If Mike Huckabee is still in the race, I’m voting for McCain in the primary.

This Republican primary season is turning out to be a fight for the direction of the party; it’s a fight that’s overdue. I’m an American first and a Republican a distant second. The nation is poorly served when either major party strays too far from the center where ideas can be debated rather than ideologies shouted.

Watching the Meter Run Backwards - Priceless

If you don't see a YouTube graphic above, click here for the video.

Holding a camera in video mode sideways - really dumb.

But you can see the black dot on the wheel go from right to left (top to bottom) indicating that on a hazy midafternoon in January in Vermont, I'm generating enough electricity from my photovoltaic array to drive the meter backward (not much load at this time either).

Should a Cellular Carrier Be Your ISP at Home?

It’s not cheap; it’s not available everywhere; it’s not even particularly fast. But wireless Internet access from your cellular provider may be your best option for home Internet access in some parts of the US (I don’t know enough about 3G coverage outside the US to write intelligently about it). Moreover, if it works for you, it’ll probably work all over your house, in the yard, and in an increasing number of places you visit. And no installation is required.

If you already have cable-based broadband, you would only be interested in cellular coverage for roaming so you can skip to the next post. Similarly, if you have a good fixed fixed wireless connection giving you over a meg of download capacity most of the time, you’re not interested. If you’re satisfied with your DSL, even if it’s just basic DSL, you’ll probably want to stick with it because it’ll be lot cheaper than wireless from a mobile carrier.

But if dialup and satellite have been your only options, read on.

In response to my post Why Satellite Internet Access Sucks, reader Michael Hardt posted this comment:

“I'm in rural New Hampshire, and I'm always scheming to improve on my dial-up Internet. Lately I've been reading about HSDPA and EVDO. I have very spotty cell phone access where I live--generally to make a call I have to walk outside and step about thirty feet away from the house. I've heard of cell phone repeaters and amplifiers and stationary antennae but don't understand them. Is there some way that I can mount an antenna to my roof to get Internet via a cell signal? Can I find out whether HSDPA and EVDO are even available in Canaan, NH?”

Bad news is that apparently neither HSPDA (High Speed Packet Downlink Access) nor EVDO (Evolution Data Optimized) are available yet in Canaan, NH. The better news is that they may be soon. The rest of this post is about what these technologies can provide, how to tell whether or not you can get them where you live, and some facts to help you decide whether these are good alternatives for your home broadband service.

Oversimplified, HSPDA is used on GSM networks like that run by AT&T and Unicel; EVDO is used on GSM networks like those of Verizon and Sprint. If you use a different carrier, you need to check with them to see what sort of data plan they provide and find out what the coverage area for it is.

I use Verizon Wireless EVDO for roaming (although only for backup as a home service) so I know the most about that. You use it by buying (for less than $100 from Verizon Wireless) a datacard or USB device for your PC. You install some software; and, if you have coverage, you’re online. The rub is that an “unlimited” data plan costs $60/month, requires a two-year signup, and is even more if you don’t already have Verizon Wireless service.

“True” EVDO gives me download speeds at or a little above one megabit/second most of the time. Verizon advertises upload speeds of 500-800Kbps (kilobits per second) but I rarely get better than 200 to 300 and sometimes less. Latency (the time it takes for packets to get from your computer to websites and back) is typically low. This means that you can use EVDO for web browsing happily and can use VoIP over EVDO.

Be careful about downloading video and other big stuff, though. The Verizon plan says “If usage exceeds 5 GB per line during any billing period, we reserve the right to reduce throughput speeds of any application that would otherwise exceed such speed to a maximum of approximately 200 Kbps. These speeds are subject to change, in our reasonable discretion, in order to address network issues.” I’ve occasionally exceeded that with an online backup but no reason to assume they don’t mean to enforce this. They specifically ban P2P file sharing on this plan. I believe the restrictions of other carriers are at least as draconian but haven’t examined them.

Verizon’s data network does NOT provide EVDO everywhere. In many locations only 1xRTT is available. This service (which is part of the same rate plan) is a lot slower. It can go up to 110Kbps in either direction but Verizon says not to plan on more than 60Kbps (I agree). This is about twice as fast on the downlink side (from the Web to you) as most dialup connections and at least four times as fast for uplink. It’s fine for most email; slow for downloads; painful but better than dialup for web browsing; and barely usable sometimes for VoIP services like Skype. Although the download is nominally a lot slower than satellite, I found 1xRTT about equal to satellite in total experience because it has low latency (satellite latency is high) and is weather resistant.

Verizon Wireless is rapidly upgrading their network from 1xRTT to EVDO. They never install a new location or even a new radio without putting in EVDO. In Vermont the EVDO coverage area has grown like a welcome ink blot from its initial appearance in downtown Burlington a little over a year ago. Chance are, if you have good Verizon cell phone coverage, you’ll have EVDO reasonably soon – but they’re not making any promises.

So how do you find out what service is available to you? How do I know that reader Michael can’t get EVDO in Canaan right now? Two ways to find out. One is pretty simple, if you don’t have good cellular service for voice, you’re not going to be able to get it for data. Comes off the same towers. If a particular carrier doesn’t offer voice service in your area, they don’t offer data service either.

But, if you or a friend gets decent voice coverage from a mobile carrier at your house, you may be able to get good data coverage as well. The interactive Verizon coverage map is at http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/CoverageLocatorController?requesttype=NEWREQUEST (be sure to specify that you want to see data coverage). They call EVDO “BroadbandAccess” on this map and call 1xRTT either “Enhanced Service” or “National Access”; ignore “extended enhanced services” because it includes roaming rates.

A similar map for Sprint is at http://coverage.sprintpcs.com/IMPACT.jsp?id16=evdo_coverage&covType=sprint. Note that Sprint advertises that both their EVDO and 1xRTT are a little slower than Verizon. I haven’t tested this.

The AT&T map is at http://www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer/. They advertise that their HSPDA provides 400-700Kbps downlink and 384 Kbps uplink. Like Verizon and Sprint much of the rural portion of AT&T’s data coverage uses a lower speed technology – there is called EDGE and runs at about the same speed as 1xRTT.

I couldn’t find a map for Unicel which is a shame because they have good rural coverage. But they’re in the process of being bought by Verizon Wireless and spinning off their some of their GSM properties to AT&T.

Cellular data isn’t the affordable fast service for everyone that we need to have in Vermont and the rest of the nation. But, where it’s available, it’s a better solution than satellite or dialup for those who can afford it.

See Sharing Cellular Data Access Between Multiple PCs if you want to connect your whole home network through a cellular data connection on one computer.

The Snows of Whiterock Mountain

Near the top of Whiterock Mountain in Vermont.

Puzzle: why is Tucker wearing a red blanket and Bruiser wearing a bandana (hard to see)? Vermonters please don't answer; too easy a question for you.