There were some minor hiccups, however. My Solis disconnected from T-Mobile (or maybe the other way around?) 3 times and my connection reverted to my DSL. These were brief interruptions and things resumed normally once the cellular connection was back up-and-running. Needless to say, my students commented on the poor quality of the presentation while I was on the DSL. CenturyLink, I'm looking at you.
The price was reasonable for the service. The first GB was $6US and I bought a 5-GB renewal for $15. So, for $21US, I had the Internet Connectivity to run the class. As a quick note, again, I disabled the webcam on my laptop to buy back some bandwidth. I used almost all of the 6GB in one week and the rest will just expire at the end of my current month - after class I disabled the auto-subscription again. Speaking of CenturyLink, I tried to use my home connection before using the Solis. Within 5 minutes of starting class, the chat window lit up with "you're breaking up" and "can't hear you" and "please say that again" and "that was garbled." To conserve bandwidth, I disabled my webcam, but that didn't help. Abandoning CenturyLink DSL and using the Solis, the class went much better. Using one of the "What is my IP Address" web sites, I was able to determine that the ISP was T-Mobile and their Point-of-Presence (PoP) was in Chicago. For the week, I monitored my signal strength and bandwidth. Most of the time, the Solis only had 1-Bar of cellular signal and a data rate in the single-MB/sec range. Compared to my home DSL on CenturyLink, however, it was more robust for voice-and-slides-and-demos. On Friday, strangely enough, my Solis had 4-Bars and mid-20MBs in speed. I had the opportunity to use my SkyRoam Solis to teach an online class using one of the video-conferencing platforms. This was a 5-day EC Council class. Here's my experience: Tiago Costa introduced me to the Solis at an MCT summit several years ago.įirst, the disclaimer. I don't *quite* live in a spot in the "Internet Desert" but it's close. Many years ago, CenturyLink bought my rural Internet Service Provider (and telco.) The service levels are as mediocre as ever - or worse now that people are working from home and kids are online for school. National Public Radio (US) had an interesting piece about kids who are unable to attend internet-based schooling because of the lack of Internet connectivity. This was in late April 2020. . In the Great Depression, the United States created the Rural Electrification Act. Jessica Rosenworcel of the US Federal Communications Act is now calling for a Rural Digitization Act to bring the country's Internet infrastructure into the 21st century. Sorry, CenturyLink, but your service is terrible - especially for those that need to stream what they are doing.Īt an MCT Summit several years ago, one of Microsoft's cloud evangelists told me that the answer would be 5G cellular technology. "It will be fast, cheap, and unlimited," he said. Almost half-a-decade later, this is still all a pipe-dream.
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