I am moving. But, I haven’t said to where exactly. Well, that’s mostly because I haven’t found a place. Anyone that has moved knows the pain of finding a new place to live. My troubles are much worse.
See, one of the killer benefits of the Sacramento Valley versus the Bay Area is a little company called SureWest. You may have heard of Surewest when then recently sold their regional wireless network to Verizon Wireless. But, SureWest’s strength is in landline service. Fiber landline service. Fiber to The Premises (FTTP/FTTH) service.
So, while still being able to reach the Bay Area and Silicon Valley within a couple of hours, I can work from home at 50 mbps down… and 50 mbps up per second. Just to give you a speed rate, that clocks in at being able to send an entire CD-ROM in under two minutes. Sure, Paxio is trying to pull this off in the Bay Area, but they aren’t what I would call “combat tested” (i.e. patently unreliable). SureWest is quite the opposite, being the first deployer of Microsoft IPTV over their network.
However, as with all things real estate, the key is location, location, location. Mainly, finding a place with service that is also acceptable to live. I’ve broken SureWest’s FTTP coverage down to three areas. One, unsavory neighborhoods that happen to be under their backbone. Two, overpriced neighborhoods that haven’t been hurt in the slightest by the housing crunch. And, three, a small sliver of reasonable places to live that are also lit up for FTTP.
Now, the real killer has been that SureWest has made this process about as hard as possible. I went to their regional offices, asking for a coverage map. I was told to use their coverage check. Now, their coverage checker is the most manic-depressive tool I’ve used since DSL in the old days. It will literally report FTTP coverage every other house (on the same block face of the same street). Clearly, it’s inaccurate at best. But, I’m stuck using it. And, I have used it over 500 times (trust me, I’ve kept count).
So, I’m closing this post near the end of my saga. I hope to have the papers signed on a new place later this week. I’ve said that to myself for the past three weeks, but it’s just about done… hopefully.
And, that is why I’ve been so tied up the past few weeks. Sorry. But, having 50 mbps to leverage will allow me, and in turn, MechaWorks, to have a great signal. After all, I have the bandwidth of a few cell towers at my disposal now.