szescstopni @szescstopni@qoto.org

Another difficult #RuralBroadband installation. The cranes flying above us refused to help.

A frequency reshuffle is planned in my country and my backbone operator might lose their band in a few months. This means I'd go out of business too. This would be really bad for a lot of my customers who have no chance of getting a reliable connection in their godforsaken villages and forest settlements. I went into the #RuralBroadband business a couple of years ago, as it was the only way to have Internet in our forest house. Guess it's time to start breeding carrier pigeons and switch to #IPoAC

A lightning just struck ground a few dozen meters from a BTS. Some 50 households lost their Internet. Hoping the transmitters didn't fry.

#RuralBroadband

Some of our #RuralBroadband customers think the more external antennas the routers have, the better they are. I'm thinking of ordering hundreds of small plastic sticks, for a few cents each, buying dozens of cheapest WiFi routers and super glue, gluing them together and selling them with a huge markup.

A nice patch of #lichen on a roof of a house where we had a #RuralBroadband installation a few days ago. Good to see that the air here is clean – lichens are usually a good indicator of air quality.

#LichenSubscribe

Driving back home from a day of #RuralBroadband installations. Quite early, but it's a Saturday and I need some rest. I'm now less than a kilometre from home. #RuralRoads are beautiful, but our cars hate them and make weird sounds when forced to take them.

We had great support from our customers during today's #RuralBroadband installation. The one in front is a rescue dog, the smaller one is a typical #EasternPoland village dog, and they're great friends. Dogs: 10/10. SINR: 17/18, stable 20 Mbps. Pretty good for this area.

#DogsOfMastodon

The Ascent of Internet.

#RuralBroadband

On a difficult #RuralBroadband installation. Looking at those clouds, hoping we manage to finish before they decide to fall on us.

Another #RuralBroadband installation. The place is completely surrounded by trees, so we had to go very high up to get a connection that allows comfortable #RemoteWork

I guess I should start writing down things I've learned over the past few years running a local #RuralBroadband ISP business. Some of them concern particular technologies used right now and will be obsolete in a few years or weeks. But some things never change.

In the past few hot days we've had one router and two ODU power supply failures. The lesson: never put home-grade electronics in the attics of poorly insulated houses without air-conditioning. Fortunately the rains came and it's colder now. How I waited for those wonderful thunderstorms. Oh, wait.

Operator ostatniej mili – zarówno #ZbiorKom jak i #RuralBoadband

Last mile operator – both for #PublicTransport and #RuralBroadband

Today's #RuralBroadband installation in a very sad place. This customer has no dogs, not even one. Usually we have some wonderful canine assistants, like here: https://qoto.org/@szescstopni/110255636249913201

A detail of our #RuralBroadband test setup.

The tiny house that is our home, office, and workshop, is surrounded by trees. Sometimes we need to test terminals that connect our clients to the base transceiver stations, and we need to put them as high as possible, to avoid any obstacles (usually this means trees).

This is a picture of the side of a 1 ton water tank, covered with algae on the inside, which gathers rainfall from the rain gutter. We use this water for watering the garden and for putting out an occasional #bonfire. Also it's nice to have two thousand litres of water (there's a second tank on the other side of the house) in case the dry #forest to the west of us catches fire.

A piece of a drainage pipe is attached to the metal cage of the water tank with zip ties. We attach the terminal to an old 16 ft windsurfing mast, raise it and stick it into the pipe. There are better ways to stabilize the mast in the pipe, but today the best thing lying around was this #moose bone we found in the forest (that dry forest to the west) a few years ago.

When you live in a forest, driving back home from a #RuralBroadband installation can be a wonderful scenic tour. If your suspension is tough enough.

Another day, another dollar.

We sure work cheap.

#RuralBroadband #EasternPoland

One of the most important things to keep in mind during #RuralBroadband installations on tall masts in vegetable gardens is to not trample the plants on the ground. People can live without Internet, they can't live without food :)

We were supposed to start early with #RuralBroadband installations, but it turned out that a public #library 20 km away lost its connection. This was not my business, but my technician knew about the problem, knew the place, knew how to fix it. We also knew that people responsible for fixing it wouldn't get there earlier than late next week. We lost an hour and a half, drove extra 40 kilometres, and had to tell one customer that they'd have to wait for their Netflix until Monday. But the library is back online.

A #SpectrumWar is rising in Poland for 3.8 – 4.2 GHz. We might get wiped out. #RuralBroadband

Off to another #RuralBroadband installation.