With the new house in Austin comes all the myriad things I must do to bring the house alive: Electric, gas, water, TV...and internet. It's still fascinating to me that the latter has existed only for about 15 years in its current state.
Without internet in the house, things get really boring really fast. I have found myself in the Highlander shuttling to a local Holiday Inn Express to poach free wifi from them twice a day, so I can get e-mail and (God help me) Facebook. Unlike my condo/townhome in Atlanta, there is no free community wifi in my neighborhood, and the neighbors here are all tech-savvy enough to have their wireless broadcasts password-protected.
I was originally going to get AT&T DSL service, but when my DISH network install collapsed in a heap of tech-speak ("We cain't run but one line in this here house!"), I added Uverse into the mix. Many days later, the AT&T customer non-service has blown one installation appointment and cannot give me any estimated time for a real install. Time Warner cable is another option for TV and internet, but if it's possible to loathe a company more than AT&T, it's any cable company.
So...I bit the bullet today and signed up for Clear WiMax internet mobile service. For about $58 a month, I received a cute little USB antenna that kind of looks like a mini satellite dish and picks up the new 4G speeds wherever it's available...and it's available at my house, all over Austin, and in numerous other cities (though curiously not Denver just yet).
The peppy college student at the Clear store set me up in less than 10 minutes, presenting me with a box about the size of two decks of cards. When home, I inserted the mini satellite dish into a USB port on my ThinkPad, and voila! Software automatically installed, the 4G service was found...and I'm downloading at speeds I have NEVER seen before. Faster than DSL and the free wifi at my previous place, by far.
I will take great pleasure in informing AT&T that they just lost the internet part of my order.
Meanwhile, my DISH network may actually be viable after all, so I might also be able to tell AT&T to go pound sand entirely.
TV isn't so much of an issue for the first couple of months, since I can pick up all the local channels in HD with a $20 antenna. But, in 2010, a house without internet is like a house without indoor plumbing. It was truly painful for the last three weeks!
