10 forgotten wonders of 1980s homes

[Guy Sotomayor]

On 12/30/15 6:52 PM, Jon Elson wrote:
> On 12/30/2015 12:39 PM, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
>> We just dropped our POTS service last month.  Our phone now is an 
>> OOMA VoIP Office system to get the features we wanted/needed.  I 
>> haven't tried any rotary dial phones on it since I don't have any.
>>
> We need the landline phone to call when the cable is out.  We need the 
> VOIP phone to call when the copper line is out (which is more often).

We have cell phones for backup phones (and when we're out) but the cell 
service isn't great.  I have really good signal strength up in my shop 
but almost none in the house.  I have a cellular backup link for when 
the microwave goes out (my router automatically switches over when the 
microwave link goes down) but I need to be aware of it and throttle back 
my bandwidth or else I get a hefty charge!

>> Where I'm at, I can't get DSL.  Right now I'm dependent upon a 
>> dedicated microwave link to my iSP.  I'm getting between 20-35Mb/s 
>> symmetric (used to be 10Mb/s but it looks like they upgraded the link 
>> recently).  I'm paying $$$'s but since I work from home I need the 
>> bandwidth (I'm currently using about 800GB/mo).  I had to put in a 
>> point-to-point WiFi link to get internet to the house from my shop 
>> (where the microwave dish is).
> I can't get DSL here anymore, the lines are WAY too bad for that. I 
> used to have DSL way back when.  I wish I could get symmetric cable 
> speeds here, 30/30 would be FANTASTIC, as I run a web server here. I 
> live with 60/5, but rumors are that we will get upgraded to 100/10 
> sometime fairly soon.
We're at least 2.5 miles from the DSLAM, so DSL is *not* an option. 
That's the distance on the private roads and I haven't seen where the 
DSLAM might be (nearest town is 5 miles away once you get to the 
"public" roads).

I'm paying mid-3 figures for my link.  Rumor has it that we'll have Gb/s 
fiber brought in but that's 2-3 years away at least.  For now I'm paying 
for what I need...pulling down 100GB worth of git repos for work still 
takes a while.  ;-)

TTFN - Guy