| | | There's rural, and then there's isolated... I mentioned that in Mich. my brother and I spent a lot of money to get broadband to our corner of heaven -- it was specifically at our expense to have a cable -- any cable -- run from the nearest backbone at least a couple miles away. Since it was mostly labor cost, we had them install fiber optic so we wouldn't have had to also install signal amps every X yards as we would have with traditional CATV cables from curb to house... the line is capable of many times the speed even offered by the ISP/Charter/Spectrum, which despite the big name recognition at the local level near us, it is a tiny office, one clerk-ish type employee and one guy with a van... anything more serious has to be handled by full blown crew from the nearest "city" of about 17,000 more than 45 miles or so away.
We didn't even have a "land line" phone until the mid to late 1960s up there and that was due to several other families sort of in the same area paying Ma Bell to string one stupid line through the woods, and which went down regularly from gales or just thunder storms... power goes out all the time, as again, only one power line into the entire area of square miles.
When we are there, it really is like living in mid-20th century except for the gadgets we bring with us. Slowly but surely I've been getting us more and more "off the grid" because the grid isn't all that reliable in many parts of even the US. The onus has been on me as my brother only uses it seasonally, whereas I am building to R60 insulation. The bldg code for that spot specifies R50, and no more cabins are allowed -- every new habitable structure must conform to the same codes as "city folk" in the same or neighboring zip codes... 3 years ago, the code was R45 with some exceptions for R40, but it's a lot cheaper and easier to do that sort of thing during construction, so I'm over-bldg., at least as far as the bldg codes are concerned.
And that's why, when I'm finished, I'll have ways to use wood, propane, ng and gasoline in addition to electricity -- different fuels for different purposes with all critical systems some sort of dual fuel and if necessary, can get by with just wood for heat (also set up for propane and ng -- triple redundancy for the most critical systems. Solar isn't practical above the 45th parallel esp. in the midst of square miles of mostly forested hills surrounding the inland lake and 400 ft. sand bluffs lining Lake Mich. there.
I'm not going to hold my breath for 5G there -- as it is, we often go a mile or two offshore in a boat to get a reliable cell signal. |
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