The joys of living in Rural Areas

[philotux]

Here's the view from my TARDIS...

I get an slightly different angle, some few light-years from you.

[trapperjohn]

Out our way, the power goes out when it's cloudy, so most folks have 18 kids.

No cell signal, no radio stations, no cable, and no TV here in radio-free Wastewater (even here in the booming downtown area). Verizon doesn't provide DSL, so we're all on dialup or gettin' FAPed by some slippery satelite operation. The library has a fiber connection and they are open Tuesday and Friday from 3-5.

Patch Tuesday here means a fella is going off chewing tobacco.

Google and Facebook have no clue about our behavior and, golly, we wanna be part of it all too. Here it is Zuckerberg: in summer we go catchin' frogs and at night we all sing Commin' Round the Mountain and browse through Sears catalog (when the lights are up).

[AndyMH]

The joys of living in the countryside - last weekend - our 'main road'.

snow.jpg

[JeremyB]

My road is just packed snow right now and pretty slick, glad I have good snow rated tires

[AZgl1800]

Must be warm there to have hummingbird feeder out

not right now, they were here a week ago, but the Polar Vortex dropped us right into the Freezer's bottom drawer...

we just never took it down..... the Bird feeder we have to fill everyday, and we put out 2 scoops of Sunflower seeds on the patio table.... it is a hoot to watch the squirrels jump up there and chow down..... the birds just flutter right in amongst the squirrels.








how you like that squirrel?

the Wild Game camera has an Infra Red light, that is what is shining in the dog's eyes.

and the other "squirrel", Great Pyrenees variety.

[BG405]

Great pictures (and thread in general); thanks for sharing! I'm afraid the view out of my back windows is of a rather overgrown mess .. shoulder is now just about up to cropping the pyracantha back a bit as it's competing with the Silver Birch .. brambles are invading too at least most of the ivy infestation has been dealt with.

Had a series of power cuts the other year. I quickly prepared by rigging lights up to the old van battery & could have connected some of the networking & TV stuff via invertors (&/or a UPS) if the issue had gone on much longer; 5 occasions with an hour or so off followed by a final brief outage. I was quite quick on the phone to them (usually the first caller) & told them which groups of properties were affected, usually 2 of the 3 phases were out. All our power cables (and many comms cables) are underground; the issue, apparently, was water ingress into a connection somewhere .. they had to dig up all the cable junctions along the street & renew them.

It affected around 350 properties in tha area each time according to the helpful staff on the phone; they gave me a direct number to call them on.

Where I live just 35 miles from the centre of London

It's surprising how close you can get to London & still find somewhere which seems to be in the middle of nowhere .. do you by any chance know of Tanners Hatch? It's roughly 25 miles from the centre of London, near Dorking & Leatherhead, & they are semi off-grid (if such a term is valid); landline phone service but (at best) marginal cell coverage; water but no mains electricity. They have a generator coupled to a battery bank; the warden usually removed the electric kettles at night to prevent the genny strarting up in the middle of the night as it's next to their accommodation.

[AZgl1800]

My electric power source, is a generating station just exactly 1 mile south of me.
Even so, a problem that effects a sub-station takes us right out.
Does not happen often, but in 90% of the cases it is related to very high winds and Ice Loading on the power lines.

We were off a few days ago from 5;30 pm to 11 pm... not bad considering a transformer had to be replaced. We had two failures about 2 days apart, both related to high winds.

Another failure of shorter duration was the result of a drunk driving through a power pole, bringing it right down to the ground.

I have UPS devices on my main computer ( a 1500 watt )
and two smaller ones on each TV Dish receiver ( 350 watt )

The 1500 watt UPS allowed me to enjoy the Internet for almost 3 hours even though the house was dark.... we have some of the little tiny LED room lights with self contained battery.

also lit some candles for the bathrooms and kitchen.

I have a 10KVA Auxiliary Generator in the garage, but chose not to mess with it unless the power outage lasted so long, that we would need to fire up the furnace. ( Blower motor needs a/c of course. The furnace uses Natural Gas )

[Tomgin5]

I have only had 1 power outage in the last 40+ years I have lived here. That one was a squirrel that was walking on a power line hopped onto a transformer and got vaporized about 50 foot from my bedroom window. Power company had to replace the transformer. it was a large squirrel. The transformer was supplying 50 homes. I don't live in the country.

[AZgl1800]

I have only had 1 power outage in the last 40+ years I have lived here. That one was a squirrel that was walking on a power line hopped onto a transformer and got vaporized about 50 foot from my bedroom window. Power company had to replace the transformer. it was a large squirrel. The transformer was supplying 50 homes. I don't live in the country.

you don't have to be in a rural area to loose power....
Downtown Tulsa, OK..... big metro area...

2 weeks ago, a drunk drove through a power pole and took out all power for many city blocks around it..... once those power lines short together, it blows fuses fast...

and just in the last few days, a felon stole a car, running in excess of 100 mph rolled the car and took out a power pole... this was in our local News reporting area, forget where just now.

[AndyMH]

AZgl1500 - you've got some very large squirrels!

Power outages are a way of life where I am - overhead cables, old infrastructure. Doesn't seem to take much to knock the power out, even if momentarily. Hence UPS - powerwalker 2200VA, it was still working last time we had an outage (3-4 hours), so don't actually know how long it will last.

[Portreve]

I like my privacy and jealously guard it. That said, having been to all manner of rural places, they're simply not for me. I value good infrastructure highly and would not wish to do without it.

[cliffcoggin]

It's surprising how close you can get to London & still find somewhere which seems to be in the middle of nowhere .. do you by any chance know of Tanners Hatch?

No. I am in central Kent, a few miles south of Maidstone. All the cell phone companies claim to have good 2G coverage here. They are all liars.

[BG405]

All the cell phone companies claim to have good 2G coverage here. They are all liars.

Cell phone coverage in semi-rural areas really is quite poor for such a densely populated island; especially in the south where you'd expect pretty much blanket coverage. I always thought the networks should share a "grid" of cell towers rather than having a lot of duplicate services (which I believe are using a significant proportion of co-sited or near-co-sited ones) & allow people to roam between them. This could potentially provide something approaching blanket coverage at a fraction of the overall current cost for the infrastructure.

The amalgam of T-Mobile (formerly one2one) & Orange into "EE" (Everything Everywhere, ) may have resulted in some of the above but bearing in mind that TM/one2one usually had the worst coverage with Orange also patchy outside of urban areas, even in some, so I don't know how much overall improvement has resulted. My mate often couldn't get a usable signal using these. Part of the problem is the reduced propagation properties of their 1800MHz signal along with its reduced penetrability with respect to buildings and other structures, trees etc..

When roaming in other countries, it's clear how this could benefit users as one can select the network with the best signal.

The issue seems to be, they (the cell operators) are investing too much of their resources in all these short-range 4G & very short-range 5G services which not only are unsuitable for wide area coverage but also incompatible with legacy equipment i.e. you have to buy an expensive new device even to use them. IMHO they should concentrate on the 900MHz GSM band for more rural areas and 900 & 1800MHz for more urban areas; keep the 4G & 5G for the latter.

[AZgl1800]

I'm in Oklahoma, USA so the situation is different, and yet the same.

I recently acquired a Netgear LTE modem and initially chose T-Mobile as the carrier to provide the Internet.

I soon discovered there is a LOT to be desired between the T-Mobile advertisements and their coverage map with "Guaranteed consumer comments at a specific address" and the truth of the matter.

Their consumer comments appear to be Stamped out of the same trash can.... and the LTE 4g data is no where near as available as they make it out to be on their map.

So, I switched to AT&T as the provider, and they provide the actual cell locations, and the status of a particular cell tower... some are 4g, some are 3g....

AT&T is currently turning off 2g everywhere, and 3g will follow the day that 5g is turned on... so we will have either 4g, or 5g....

A problem in the USA is the huge expanse of areas that are tens of miles away from a major traffic corridor... as much as 70 to 100 miles away from any coverage at all... AT&T seems to be better in covering our rural areas....

I have been a Verizon customer for 20+ years because they provided a heavier penetration into the the downtown buildings in Phoenix, Arizona, USA where I worked for 20 years.... at the time, a week's vacation did not allow me to travel far enough to wonder how the coverage was in the boonies....

now, being retired, life is different. We are leaving home March 5th and will be gone 3 or 4 weeks, and will be wanting to have the Internet with us.. and the LTE modem can provide that.... I bought a 14 dBi gain Yagi antenna to help if we stop in a spot where the LTE modem's internal antenna can't get a good enough signal.

I feel for folks in rural areas.... I have suffered here for 8 years on DSL and it was out of service more than it worked. Then I was talked into going with ViaSat and they loaned me a Test setup to use for 7 days.... that thing was GeeWhiz Molly and it sang a good tune... speeds of 50-70Mbps and never lower than 10-12Mbps in Prime Time hours.

Well, I bought in, and on the 7th week, I hit the wall, having going past my allowance of 35gB/month.... they throttled me down to 500Kbps down, and 200Kbps up.... I squawked loud and long, but they did not back off.... they said in the fine print, "we do not guarantee minimum speeds" even if you are inside your Priority Data allowance...

So, I bought the LTE modem and told them to kiss my arse, and unhooked.... they want a disconnect fee.... we are still arguing about that.

[JeremyB]

DSL was never available here, the phone lines could barely handle 14.4 modems and caller ID didn't work all the time. The Sheriffs dept showed up at least twice for 911 hangups that didn't happen as the phone didn't even have a dial tone when they showed up. I think I cancelled the landline in 2004 and went cellular

[lsemmens]

We had a good coverage in rural and remote areas before the advent of mobile phone. Then our Government decided to sell off the cash cow. Now, it's a hodge podge just like the rest of the world. We are literally 1 Hour's drive north of the centre of our State Capital and It is only a few weeks since we have been given High Speed Wireless Broadband. Mobile phone coverage for many providers is very hit and miss. Sort of like Stand outside on your left leg with your right arm at right angles above your head with your left leg behind your right ear and hold your tongue just so, and you might get signal.

[garry9]

I lived in the middle of nowhere and we got outages all the time.

[AZgl1800]

Feb 10th was my last post on this.

The LTE modem that I purchased from www.OliveIP.com is still working great.
We are currently in Macon, Georgia at the Shriners RV Park a few miles south of town.
the LTE modem has 5 bars, and is giving nearly unbelievable speeds.

We have been "on the road" since March 5th, stopping overnight about every 250 miles, down to Homosassa, FL and a week in Tybee Island/Savannah Georgia, and now drifting back towards home in Oologah, Oklahoma... and we have Internet every where we go!

I bought a cheap 200W modified sinewave inverter to power it and the Netgear AC-1000 WiFi router, and we have internet with unlimited bandwidth, and typically very high speeds as we roll down the highways.

it is the best thing that I ever bought for Internet access....
all other options required that it be terminated at the house, and I lost access the minute I leave the driveway... Not anymore.

Shriners.png

[DAMIEN1307]

Hmmmm..."Shriners" RV park...are you perhaps, also, a "fellow traveler to the east"...lol...DAMIEN

[michael louwe]

and we have internet with unlimited bandwidth,

.
Does AT&T not put any Data-cap on your 4G/LTE Mobile Broadband plan that is via a 4G/LTE router.? Isn't the Data capped at 22GB per month, then throttling is imposed by AT&T.?

I live in the suburbs. I have subscribed to a cheap post-paid 4G/LTE mobile phone plan that comes with unlimited Internet data, voice-calls and SMS but mobile hotspot is limited to 5GB per month of data sharing with other devices. IOW, my phone is the 4G/LTE modem-router for 4G/LTE Internet connections. If I use my laptop to share the mobile hotspot from the phone, the data-cap is 5GB per month.
....... My local Cellular ISPs also offer Wireless 4G/LTE Mobile Broadband plans via a 4G/LTE router like yours but all are Data-capped and quite costly.