"Leon Fisk" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 2 Jan 2016 07:47:41 -0500
"Jim Wilkins" wrote:

snip
My cellular Internet service has lower priority than voice calls and
slows or halts during commuting hours. At its best it can't quite
keep
up with YouTube. This hilly area also has issues with cellphone and
broadcast TV reception, though not enough to drive me to paying for
cable.

Interesting observation there. I don't know the pitfalls for the
different services but being an old electronics tech I know they are
there...

When Nextel first came on in my area they could support 6
Push-to-Talk
users per RF channel or 3 Phone users. It caused us a lot of
headaches.
They took over the old Motorola analog trunking system. Some
channels
were kept as analog for the time being while the remaining were
converted to digital. We serviced the analog side. Nextel the
digital.
The freq scheme was never designed to be digital. A digital signal
takes up the full bandwidth all the time. To our ear it sounds like
white noise. If a digital channel got turned on next to the analog
control channel it would greatly reduce the whole analog system
range
due to interference from the new digital channel. We took the grief
for
a once great system not working well anymore. Customers would get
frustrated and sign-up for the "new" system because we couldn't make
the
old system work right anymore. Worked great for you know who

The other systems in my area require a unique modem and antenna. So
you
will have that expense to figure in. Plus the monthly charge is
considerably more for roughly the same speed as ADSL. My current
modem/router/wifi unit is a discard from a neighbor. I fixed the
wall-wart, got it working again Can't beat that price. If you
watch
Craigs List they turn up there for ~$20 pretty regular...

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
Remove no.spam for email


I may gift my laptop with a cheap used WWAN card that handles the CDMA
EVDO protocol and see if I can register it with a free ISP like
FreedomPop.

When the telco tech found out that I understood how their system works
he removed bridge taps and cut off the line beyond my house. But the
copper pair is much too long for DSL.

-jsw