Ahhh, rural living in Canada.
When we moved here 12 years ago the only television reception options were: rabbit ears, antenna tower, or big costly motorized freakin’ satellite dish. So, for about 3 years we did the rabbit ears thing. We got 4 channels: 3 English, and 1 French.
About 9 years ago – shortly after kid # 1 – we finally bit the bullet and got satellite TV. What a glorious difference that made.
So, for the last 10 years, or so, we’ve been on dial-up. At first it was BAD! Maybe 14K download speed. But as MODEMs got better, and with accelerators and stuff we eventually were generally running at about 44K. I thought this was pretty good actually! The kids, however, couldn’t visit the same kind of places their friends did, and it took forever if a flash program was required.
About 3 weeks ago a tower finally went up in the neighbourhood and, as of this weekend, we’re on high speed. There were other options available before but one went into receivership and the other had some connectivity issues. The city of Ottawa just went through a 3P (Public, Private, Partnership) deal with an ISP to bring broadband to the whole amalgamated city of Ottawa. Believe it or not, there are a lot of rural folks (like me) who are now considered part of the city. (That’s another bone of contention.)
For those of you who have never been on dial-up, you have no idea, no idea at all.
No longer do I need to worry about hearing, “I’ve been trying to call you all morning and there’s no answer! What were you doing on the internet for so long?”
I had to vent my frustrations and pat myself on the back somewhere. Thanks for listening.
