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How A Group of Residents Created Their Own Internet Service Provider

After a long list of unresolved complaints
regarding bad internet services, the residents of Orcas Island
in Washington state decided to create their own internet
service by forming an organization named DBIUA. Read this
article to know how they achieved this and what were the
obstacles faced by them.
ust like the basic amenities of food
and health, a good internet service
has become everybody's
requirement. If you live in some remote
area, getting a reliable internet access is
something to be thankful for.
But, what to do if all those
complaints about that unreliable internet
access go unanswered? The residents of
Orcas Island in Washington state were
facing troubled internet with
CenturyLink's service. Instead of choosing
the option of doing nothing, they decided
to build their own internet service.
Covering this interesting story, Ars
Technica writes that the residents just got
fed up with CenturyLink and decided to
rescue themselves. This initiative was
materialized in the form of nonprofit
organization Doe Bay Internet Users
Association (DBIUA) founded by Chris
Sutton, Chris Brems, and others. The
DBIUA is now a wireless network
provider on a portion of the island.
Everyone was asking, "what can we do?'"
resident Chris Brems recalls.
"Then [Chris] Sutton stands up and says,
'Well, we can do it ourselves."
This wireless network works with radios
installed on trees and houses in the Doe
Bay portion of Orcas Island. A microwave
tower across the water in Mount
Vemon (Washington) sends signals to
radios installed on the top of a water
tower on the island, which further
transmits the signal to the radios on trees.
DBIUA paid StarTouch Broadband
Services about $11,000 for getting this
microwave link to the water tower.
Sutton is a software developer and he's
amazed how rare such projects are as "it
wasn't that hard."
In 2013, the troublesome CenturyLink
service was supposed to provide download
speeds up to 1.5Mbps. The network failed
to deliver that and the service was totally
oversubscribed. Well, now the things are
changed as BIUA delivers 30-40Mbps and
it has never been below 20-25Mbps.
And here's the best thing about the
service, unlike your data provider, there's
no data cap for DBIUA users.
To measure the obstacles that could
hinder the wireless signals, DBIUA used a
drone to determine "whether a radio on a
treetop could reach other points of the
network".
The homes have a radio on the roof or
some other place that points to one of the
10 relay points that send the internet
signals. For the users, it's just like the
signals come to their tree and then to the
house.
All over the area, there are about 200
radios spread and each household has a
Wi-Fi router in the home to access the
internet.

Josidel Hosting
www.josiahdele.blogspot.com

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