Bucket trucks. I love the FairPoint bucket trucks. This morning I found one of them directly in front of my house spinning fiber optic cable from pole to pole. Two more trucks and half a dozen guys swarmed our local Remote Terminal - the phone company wiring cabinet down the road. At least two other RTs in Northport are getting, or have already gotten the same treatment.
For our little broadband deprived island in Waldo County, this is big stuff! Anyone within 3 miles of one of these newly activated Remote Terminals should be able to get VantagePoint DSL, available at up to 15 megabits/sec. No idea when FP will begin signing people up. I hope/guess before the end of the year. After all, with cable hung, the investment has been made. The company has a clear financial motivation to start signing people up as soon as possible.
So, this is what meeting the "83% broadband coverage by the end of 2010" requirement, placed on FairPoint by the Maine Public Utilities Commission, actually looks like on the ground. To those of you still waiting, I wish you bucket trucks in your near future.
So please excuse this bit of geeky self-indulgence. Future posts will be less focused on my own frustrated Internet needs, now close to satisfaction, and more the general and still spotty situation across the State of Maine.
I leave with you with a few other shots of my new friends from the bucket truck:
Great news Karl!
ReplyDeleteAwesome, I should of taken pictures of all the bucket trucks in chesterville lol.
ReplyDeleteI dont know whats going on now Karl, it seams like fairpoint just stopped work in chesterville be for it even got to my street, its on the end of the street just before mine called the valley road and I live in the dutch gap road.
I hope this little delay does not mean they decided to call it quits because man after seeing the trucks me and my family and friends got all excited about being able to use the internet like every one els.
Hey Karl if you see any more fairpoint trucks ask them about Chesterville on the Dutch Gap Road, we have been in the Internet stone age for 10+ years =o
Roger,
ReplyDeleteI think FP is deploying a newer, faster version of DSL in most of the new areas. To do this it only has to run new cable to the Remote Terminal serving a given area. Once the fiber (maybe copper in some areas, I'm not sure) is hooked into the RT, it is possible to offer DSL over existing phone lines out to about 3 miles of wire-run in any direction. For you, the key question is how far you are from the RT that was (hopefully) enabled. Hope you fall within that range...
Regards,
Karl
Hey Karl, I live less then a mile from the RT.
ReplyDeleteHey post a comment here ;) your input is most welcome!
http://www.dailybulldog.com/db/?p=6135#comment-189960
Looks like fairpoint has started work again, Chesterville hill and pope road now have access to 15 megabyte dsl, the pope road is right next to my road, its almost here!