REFRESH Nelson County Life Magazine HERE
As we have been telling you here the work to bring BPL internet service to rural customers continues in the Afton & Faber areas out of the Martins Store Substation. That will eventually service many locations along Routes 151, 6 and U.S. 29 along with other roads off of those main connectors.
Today, NCL received the e-mail update regarding the status of the service:
From: amanda.langley@ibec.net
Subject: IBEC BPL Service Update
Date: August 4, 2008 3:13:32 PM EDT
To: info@nelsoncountylife.comDear Customer,
Thank you for signing up for IBEC’s BPL Internet Service. We have received your setup fees and are preparing to ship your BPL modem. You should be receiving your modem within the next two weeks. Because you have signed up for service during our deployment phase, you will be among the first customers in your area to have service. Signing up during this period also waives your installation fee because our crews will install equipment outside your home or business as we deploy the service on the powerlines in your area. We plan to have service up at your location within six weeks of receiving your modem, but will try our best to make this wait as short as possible.
In order to minimize delays, please call IBEC Customer Service to register your modem as soon as you receive it.
IBEC’s toll free number is 1-888-IBEC-BPL (1-888-423-2275) Option 1.
We look forward to serving you.
Thank you,
IBEC Customer Service
IBEC is supposed to be contacting us with more details, but as of this e-mail has not been in touch with us. We will let you know, when we know.
Anyone that gets the service or sees activity, please drop us a message here or post a comment on this thread (by clicking on the topic heading / title at the top which opens the comment section up below) so we can let others know.
NCL
I was intrigued by all this and called CVEC last week. They knew nothing and referred me to IBEC. I spoke with an IBEC representative who was very helpful but at the end of the one hour conversation, the result is that the top of Wintergreen Mountain is not on the list — they are focusing on those areas without other access to broadband (quite understandable) and closer to the substation (also understandable). It also turns out the service is 600kbps both up and down. This compares with my existing Verizon DSL which maxes at 1500 down and 384 up (some Wintergreen Mtn subscribers have 2x that). But it’s oversimplified to focus only on speed. It’s all about “ping time” or “latency”.
After 10:30 am or so each day, Verizon’s “ping time” goes way up and any realtime communication becomes unreliable. It can’t support simple VOIP voice phone calls. (I’ve had to buy a separate land line for use after 10:30 am.) The VOIP (e.g. Skype and Vonage) services tell me they need only 90kbps for reliable voice if ping times are good. Verizon can’t deliver this. This means IBEC is 7x faster than needed for Skype/Vonage. So if it is reliable (not yet known)even at its slower speed, IBEC might be a better deal if the “ping times” are good.
I look forward to having that option. I’ll buy both.
But let’s not kid ourselves, we should all keep in mind that even the fastest Verizon DSL at 3000kbps is not considered true broadband any more. In modern, tech-focused areas of the country 5,000kbps (5M) is consider minimum. Many providers are now at 30,000kpbs (30M) or above. I fear that despite some great efforts, we are being left behind.
What is the pricing on this service? I don’t recall our letter mentioning that.
Seems like I remember the price of $29.95 per month Courtney for the lower tier service in the home. If the speeds are in fact as fast as they say, yet to be determined, that’s pretty good. Far less than satellite internet.
NCL
We called CVEC and they said that since we are on the Midway substation and not the Martins Substation then we are not going to be served at all. Is this true? We are only 2 miles off 151 in Afton. Come on Nelson County get some modern services in our County!
We rec’d our modem Sep 3. It is sitting on the shelf (after registering it as required) until we receive a “phone call” from IBEC. They could not give me a date when this phone call might occur. Personally, I think that they should have been much closer to ‘implementation’ when they took our money in July to sign up for this thing. I noticed that they extended the sign up deal.
Yea Kevin, we agree. The insert with our modem said we could expect service within 1 to 8 weeks? That’s a nice broad (no pun intended) span of time. As you said in your post, the initial flier inserted with the CVEC bill made it sound as though the service was just around the corner. Yes, it was very, very carefully worded as to not get corralled into a specific time. That’s been the biggest complaint that we have received, people paid for their equipment up front, but the implementation has been very slow. Much of the backbone, almost all of it locally, didn’t start until the “implementation” date. In most instances the provider would have the backbone in place, test the system to make sure it worked, then begin offering subscriptions, not the other way around.
Still, if the system works as advertised, this will be a huge leap for broadband for those of us that haven’t been able to get it before.
Meanwhile , we wait …..
NCL