SlackthePlanet

A little history. I’ve been stuck in the dark ages for a long, long, long, time. When I first started using computers way back then 14.4 modems were considered fast(Don’t laugh). Over time I did what any reasonable geek would do I upgraded every chance I got throwing money away on what now would be considered “relics”. I made the progression up to 28.8 to 33.6 and then 56k…sadly however that is where it all stopped for me.

I had the misfortune of living in the country. Yes, this does mean I am blessedly free of neighbors complaining every time I do something like walk naked in front of an open window. However it means I am also on my local phone providers shit list. I had been begging their customer service for years to run DSL to my location. Their response over the last six years has always been the same “Very soon, we are expanding all the time”. It turns out that the customer service line about expansion could not have been further from the truth. One day I happened to talk with a DSL technician for said phone company. I asked the gentleman is there was anything he could do to speed up the deployment or possible give me an ETA. The response was the one I had been expecting all these years, he begins with a laugh and then says:

“Out there? You’ll never get DSL way out there. We need at least fifty houses to agree to sign up before it becomes financially viable to put a switch out there.”

In itself this wouldn’t be so bad for most people. Then again most people have more than one option for internet access. Not here though. In my area my local phone provider is also the only dial-up internet provider. No AOL, Earthlink, NetZero, nothing at all…and to make matters worse my phone provider didn’t just charge $9.95 for their dial-up. Oh no, I was paying $21.95 a month for FREAKIN DIAL-UP PEOPLE!

Now its not that I’m a cheapskate, I told them I would gladly pay much more for a faster connection. At this point most people usually point out HughesNet or Wildblue or some other satellite service. That unfortunately was a no-go as well. But all was not lost! My savior came in the form of a website by the name: EVDOforums. It was there that I learned all about broadband through cell service.

I am currently with AT&T wireless but they were defiantly not an option considering how slow the EDGE network is on my iphone. In the end I signed a two year contract with Alltel just for their EVDO data plan. My speeds aren’t anywhere near what most people on DSL or Cable are accustomed to, but coming from 56k it feels like I’m finally set free<insert song: Born Free>. If anyone else out there is suffering like I was then I beg you, break the bonds of dial-up and give your local phone company the middle finger and a hearty F.U.