Wireless Internet Reviews

There's a lot of good things to be said for moving away from the hustle and bustle of a large city or escaping the blandness of suburbia. Escaping to a nice small rural town or perhaps staring your own family farm may be something you aspire to do but spare a thought for the people who already are living this life as they may be foregoing one of the most basic necessities of life. The internet. I mean, come on, can you imagine living without the internet? It just doesn't make any sense.

That may be a sweeping generalization that rural life is devoid of internet access but there are still plenty of rural areas where the phone system doesn't even support 56K dial-up. If you remember the halcyon days of dial-up, you'll know they were total weak sauce.

So what do you do if you live in out in the country and you need high-speed broadband internet access?

Luckily many Americans living in rural areas now have a number options for getting broadband internet thanks to programs like the USDA's rural development broadband loan. A growing amount of remote areas are now serviced with broadband internet were traditionally there are last mile issues. This is often achieved wirelessly as the laying of cable is often considered prohibitively expensive.

The companies that supply this service are known as Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs). Typically these services require you to have an antenna installed at your home to receive the radio signals that carry your internet service. The WISPs signals you receive will be transmitted from a tower servicing you locale.

As a lot of these networks are built using Wi-Fi technology and service providers tend to only have small networks it may be possible to roam between service providers using the WISPr protocol. Inter-network roaming is encouraged by the Wi-Fi Alliance and it means you can go mobile with your internet. Before you choose a WISP check with them to see what if they can offer any roaming services and what wireless modems they can support.

Although these wireless internet services seem like the answer to many rural broadband access problems, there can be some severe limitations to the service. There is a relatively small range on the signal transmitted so service areas in turn can be quite small. Most of the technologies used in this service also require line of sight.

This means there is a straight, unobstructed line between your antenna and the radio tower. Some lower frequency technologies don't require line of site but there will be significant drop in the maximum bandwidth and the range the signal can travel. So your geographical location can play a major part in the availability of this service.

One of the newer technologies gathering a lot of attention at the moment is WiMAX. This could overcome some of the problems faced with existing wireless internet services.

Many companies are looking into build out WiMAX networks as they are a long-range system unlike the Wi-Fi based systems. Meaning that less towers would have to set up to cover a large area. Not only could WiMAX be used to provide last-mile service to homes it could also be used to connect existing Wi-Fi hotspots to other networks greatly increasing roaming areas. These larger roaming areas mean that WiMAX is perfect for mobile broadband access.

As the popularity of rural wireless grows and with exciting new technologies like WiMAX starting to roll out, it may not be too long before everyone, no matter where they live, can have access to decent broadband access. Only time will tell.