A small town in Minnesota
...attempted to create "municipal broadband" using WiMAX, one transmitter of which was located on top of a recently-built water tower, which was on the opposite side of the small lake my parents live on.
Previously said parental units had dial-up, usually courtesy of my brother or I's accounts through local-ish Major State Public University. But after we all left, they decided to go the high-speed route and neither cable nor standard telco had decent offerings in their neighborhood [1].
Due to a direct sight-line across the lake, they thought they had a great solution (the closest base in the other direction was up a hill with a grove of tall pine trees in the way).
It. Plain. Sucked.
The signal was weak from Day 1, and the transceiver flaky. The city IT kept blaming my parents computer, FINALLY upgrading their equipment after years of issues and sending a tech with tools to find just the right spot in their home office (spare bedroom) to mount/orient the antenna.
They might have been the first/last/only customers (as far as I know) right up to the point when the city pulled the plug. By then the local telco finally upgraded things well enough for a DSL-like connection that was worth the price.
Wasted time, wasted money, lots of frustration. No tears shed for the passing of WiMAX.
[1] Their "neighborhood" is an old section of a state highway that ran close to said lake and was bypassed long ago but only annexed into the city proper within my lifetime; the wiring infrastructure is older than me and they are almost 2 miles from "downtown".
(If my brother visits these forums, he can feel free to correct anything I remembered wrong, because most of it is secondhand hearsay from "the folks".)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
