We actually signed up for that service a couple of weeks ago. We have had some technical difficulties (mostly being not in direct line of sight with the tower) and so we've had to get a stronger booster (I don't know if this is the correct term or not - I'm not a techie!). That's supposed to be installed this afternoon so I'll let you know tomorrow how it works.

Which reminds me, mmockler, if you got a transceiver update today, then ipso facto you already knew about GBT before the story broke here! Do tell: How did you find out about them? Moreoever, why didn't you tell us, your faithful readers!

But no matter, all milk spilled under the whetstone bridge, on to our ongoing east-beach broadband saga, and, well, seems my saga is still a sorry but no-go. They tried, they really did. They scaled the rig and twisted that antenna this way and that, over and over and made themselves late for their next appointment, but we just could not catch so much as a quantum wavelet of the signal off Forbes Gravel. In that line of sight, I'm caught behind the Birchwood Ridge, and south-west towards Carson's, I'm on the leaside of Kirkland's Hill. Gives a whole new reframe to the song "If I had a Rocket Launcher" ...

So, alas, I'm not in the game, not yet, anyway, and that's why this is all good news for the rest of you.

Apparently GBT has at least two options:

• they can up the wattage at the gravel pit
• or they can mount a relay atop the Birchwood ridge

If they do the latter, it opens up highspeed wireless access to all the homes in the WiFi shadow of Lippert's hill. Which is pretty much everyone who's been sidelined by the lack of Bell interest.

I'm told they'll sort it out over at GBT, and get back to me "within two weeks".

So, mmockler ... how are those Sauble Beach YouTUBE Videos? Ah, never mind. I was going to wait for the book to come out anyway. Ditto for the town office e-ballot how-to flick (I heard it was done by Wim Wenders!)

Phone (VoIP?) but you can already get Skype handsets at the electronics outlets, so all you need for that is the minimum 1Mbps package; we used skype off our lowly 220kbps and while it was like the old 60's era transatlantic for latency, it still worked. Given modern computers (three times as fast as mine) and real broadband (likewise 3x) I expect Skype would do just fine as a replacement phone, and it's only a few bucks a year vs 150x that if you get your landline from bell.

Their website is also promising 40-channels of video content, which will likely not be really feasible until you get into the higher-bandwidths. Nonetheless, at least they are moving forward.

And speaking of moving forward, for those of you in my local underserviced Amabel-Sauble School hinterland, the latest news is good news: GBT has asked if they may use my tower to set up a relay beacon so as to get low-cost service to the rest of you. Seeing as that was my grand plan way back before I ran out of the money to do it, I could see no earthly reason to say no, so you can expect the go-signal to place your orders within the next few weeks.

And speaking of connections, I did finally hear back from my prior provider, nearly 6 weeks after they vanished with my hardware, offering a special new-unit deal price of only $650 to get me back on the low-grade signal line. I, ah, said, um, well, thanks but ... no.

In other news, I've heard a rumour about yet another wireless option, this rumour confirmed by my own WiFi gear actually as it picked up the signal ID while testing for the GBT beacon: The story goes there's someone in Hepworth who is offering long-range WiFi that is supplied by their Bell DSL line. Not the greatest architecture, but if the price is right and the service reliable, it's not the worst either.

Not there yet, not by a long shot, but it has been tantalizingly close by times. Running in an experimental mode which GBTel hopes will open up the D-Line/Dorina shadowlands if only we can get enough bandwidth through to my tower, enough to feed the rest of you out there. That's the goal.

But it's slow going. Right now there's only enough radio energy grazing the top of the Birchwood Ridge to get me to about 36kbps, about 2/3rds the speed of your dialup modem, but with occasional raptures of upwards of 800K, which is delightful for me, when it happens, but still nowhere near enough to feed the byte-hungry hinterlands.

I've also hit a snag that may mean the default set-up is a one-way street, not literally, but effectively since the network only allows outbound connections, you to them. That means you can only connect when you make the connection; no one outside the GBT network can see you, or call you. For Skype phones or videoconferencing, for example, you'd need an outside proxy/gateway dispatcher. There's be no way to telnet home to your desktop, or demo a service to a prospect, or all sorts of the wonderful two-way participatory things that make bilateral information exchange so much fun, and so important, and without which you've become really just an information consumer. Now, I'm not sure of this just yet, could be I've just bought a dud WAN-router, could be there are other solutions like VPN or other hack-fix tunnels, but I do know that right now, so far, I can't get from there to here no matter how I try, and that's not good news.

So, not there yet, folks, but not deadstopped either. I'll keep you all posted.

In the meantime, there's always Plan A: keep nagging Bell about those unused 50-pair in the Amabel-Sauble switchbox ...

Grey-Bruce Telecom, it seems, is here, and here to stay ...

The hopes and aspirations of GBT are great" says Richard Gils, President of GBT, "as we hope to continue our trend of growing our network based on our relationships with current and new customers."
[ via Grey Bruce Telecom Home Site ]

David Gils popped by this afternoon with good news: they had just completed a new tower down near the north end of the beach and "the whole beach is now a hotspot" ... a scoot up the tower to spin around my dish and there we were, off the cat for certain now, and hopefully for good. There's still room for improvement as there's still some of those fabulous Sauble forests in the line of sight, but David has his eyes on a few shortwave and television towers backing some cottages nearby enroute to feeding my tower and from there we won't have more than a few square meters of beach where you can't get at least 1Mbps. So don't be surprised if he comes knocking on your door to beg a bit of access to your antenna.

David and I had a long talk afterward, and there is no doubt GBTel is here to stay. David is now a full-time resident at the beach (his brother, for the moment, resides down south) and they're set to take on the big telcos with a better network, run smart and lean; they've got the gear and the will and skill to make it work. It's only one year later since they got the first idea to make it so, and already we've stepped from a village on the edge of broadband to a beach where practically every campground now has access to quality affordable broadband.

More good news, and this addresses a lot of my concerns in the post above about the nitty-gritty details of their service: They've updated the GBTel website -- if you're interested in who the Gils Brothers are, where they come from and where they're headed, there's a lot more in there to read about everything from network coverage area to the planned video network to their new products in home and business security. David and I talked about a great deal more too, so keep your eye on that site (it will pop up in our sidebar here on SBP when they update their news page) because, like Jolson said, you ain't seen nuthin' yet...

And now, you'll have to excuse me. I'm going to go wallow in some YouTube, and quickly too, before they regulate it.