Brian Masinick
Yeah, 4G service DOES imply connection to a provider. What roki is saying is that in his area, that service doesn’t typically get there via cell phone towers; the service in his area comes through network services beamed via satellite technology, which apparently some providers do use in remote areas.
The first time I ever used satellite technology for phone service was in the EARLY 1980s. I was working at General Motors, and they had an extensive, worldwide long distance network. Until the US and the phone companies “divested” their business into various pieces, there was ONLY AT&T, MCI, and maybe a few minor others. For data communications, you still had to go through one of them unless you built your own. GM was looking into that, and tried testing, buying, or leasing various technologies, including satellite communications. But in those days, the only satellites in service for telecommunications had pretty high orbits, so there was a 1/2 to 1 second “propagation delay”. The calls were remarkably clear, only there was a definite DELAY.
These days, whether satellite, microwave tower, fiber optic, or coaxial cable technology is used, all of them are much faster than they were. The “transceiver” technology that transfers from the physical media to the telephony and computer circuitry has also vastly improved, allowing not only megabit, but now gigabit, and potentially even higher speeds. So being in a remote desert, though it does “limit” the options, today even there we do have some options, and the costs have come down, perhaps not as much as we’d like, but back in the eighties, these costs were prohibitive; today they are affordable to most, and downright cheap in some cases.
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Brian Masinick
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