[NCLUG] Mesa Networks (broadband)

[John L. Bass]

	Mesa Networks advertises a residential-grade wireless service that is
	supposedly comparable in both price ($44/mo) & performance (500/250k) to
	DSL.  Problem is, they're not offering it in Fort Collins yet -- you can
	only get their $125/mo. biz rate, and that's only if you're within 2.5 miles
	and line-of-site to the top of Key Bank.  But Todd with Mesa tells me that
	if I can get enough (>25, 50 optimum) people in my area, they'd be
	interested in a repeater site and would break out the residential rate for
	all concerned.  Soooo....

At CWX we looked into installing on the tower across the street which is higher than
Key Bank. The 3rd and 5th harmonic noise from all the cell phone, pagers, and 2-way
gear on the two buildings made the site prohibtively RF noisey if we expected any
more range than a mile or two. The clintcher was that within that range all you
can see in the summer is tree tops which are impossible to get 2.4GHz signal thru.
All those homes are inside AT&T and DSL service areas, making the wireless service
completely non-competitive. It will probably be a while before Mesa can convince
enough DSL customers to abandon their dedicated point-to-point high bandwidth links
for a shared bandwidth RF link that is affected by interference and weather at times.