In 2007 a group of interested individuals in Newbury Harbor came to us and asked if we could provide a high speed solution to home owners and businesses in the harbor area. With enough people interested to make the venture feasible we deployed a high speed wireless network with fantastic performance results.
Since that time we have been repeatedly asked if we could provide a solution to the homes on the back of our beloved Lake Massasecum. We have since been working to create a micro ISP project to serve those needs.
How does your service compare to Satellite?
Because of the proximity of the network we do not experience atmospheric dropouts on rainy or snowy days as satellite does. With satellite your internet request must travel up through the atmosphere to the satellite, then back down to the server of the website you are accessing, retrieve the data, go back through the atmosphere to the satellite then back down to you. Your request must go through the atmosphere four times! Our access points are within 1-3 miles of your location. This is not satellite technology!
What speeds can I expect?
We will provide several tiers of speed and pricing once we go live. Pricing can be found under on services page.
I don’t quite understand what these speeds mean to me?
Latency is a very important term to understand. The higher your latency the more delay you experience while surfing the internet. Our experienced latency in Newbury Harbor ranges from 50ms—250ms which is the equivalent of wired DSL. Compare that to experienced, not advertised, satellite latency of 1000ms —2000ms! With a latency that high you can’t run Vonage phones or participate in online gaming and your page to page surfing won’t feel much better than dial up.
In essence 768k with a latency of 50ms compared to a satellite link of 768k with a latency of 2000ms responds 20 times faster!
Symmetric means you will have the same upload bandwidth as download bandwidth. Usually this is reserved for higher priced business clients or is limited by technology. It will speed up uploading photos to facebook, VPN connections to work or simply any outbound data transfer. This becomes especially important for those looking to telecommute.
As a comparision, products that range from 256k to 512k will surf at speeds far greater than you dial-up connection and allow you to enjoy graphically active sites such as facebook or ebay.
768k is a minimum for streaming video. Remote and VPN connections will also want at least 768k+ to be usable.
I’m interested. What’s next?
We will come out and perform a free site survey. During this survey we will establish the ability to link with our access point. We will also locate a suitable installation location. Examples of some of what wireless units look like are on our website. It is important to note that these are not units that home owners can purchase and configure themselves. This is a secure point to point internet stream and not wifi. Once we have installed the wireless unit you can plug in your wifi unit and have wireless in your home at that point that same way you might use a comcast or TDS wireless service. When a suitable location is found we will either perform the install or schedule to come back at your convenience and perform the install. Installation times vary by complexity. We like to budget three hours for an install.
Do I need a phone line to access the service?
No. Our service is delivered 100% free of any telephone line requirements. It is because we are not reliant on existing phone wiring that we are able to provide this service.
When will the we be able to begin using the internet at high speed?
Usually we schedule installs a week in advance but if equipment and installers are available we can often install on a day's notice.
Will there be any seasonal packages?
We recognize that some people interested in service are only on Massasecum seasonally. To meet this desire we have created several different levels of service as well as month to month instead of contract service. Seasonal owners may opt for the lowest service speed in the off-season to save money . We can also disconnect service entirely but to be reconnected will require that the installation fee be paid again.
