If you want something done right …
Do-it-yourselfers take internet service into their own hands.
Internet service in Mono County sucks, so some residents have started providing their own service for the small communities they call home.
Kirk Hartstrom in Devils Gate and Jen Britton and Chris Nichols in Bridgeport have become Internet service providers, small businesses run out of their homes. Internet service could be an avenue for economic expansion and development in the county.
There are few Internet providers in the area despite a 580-mile multi-million dollar high-speed fiber optic cable paralleling Highway 395 from Barstow to Carson City, Nev. known as Digital 395. Communities such as Chalfant and Crowley have been approved for grants to allow Race Communications to bring D395 to homes, but the process has been slow.
The Town of Mammoth Lakes is in a quandary as it is considered a “served” area and is not eligible for grants.
Satellite service is the sole source for world wide webbing for much of the unincorporated parts of Mono but is fragile, going down in poor weather. And, satellite service is s-l-o-w. Every click of a mouse is beamed all the way to outer space and back before anything happens.
According to Hartstrom the lag time for mouse clicks via satellite service is 1,000 milliseconds, but with D395, the lag is down to 20 milliseconds.
Hartstrom, a self-professed computer lover, said satellite service was his only source of Internet for years, then he heard about D395 and that it was being laid right in front of his house. “It was going right across my driveway, so I might as well take advantage of it,” he said.
Hartstrom has a background in technology and systems management, so he was capable of doing the job. He said he rented a Ditch Witch and trenched from his property line to his house and laid conduit. He said he buried the conduit deep so it wouldn’t get destroyed, but there were no regulations for burying a non-electrical line on his property. Praxis, the contractor installing D395, helped connect Hartstrom for a reasonable price. He connected his house and router, then put an antennae on a tree outside his house and has another antennae on a neighbor’s hill to provide service to seven Devils Gate residents. Mountains and hills in the way prevent his signal from travelng further.
“I put my antennae on a tree, I put batteries in an ice chest …its not a big money operation,” he explained. He estimated his entire investment so far is about $7,000, capital he expects to make back by providing the service to his neighbors.
He said his intention was to get great service for himself and his home and his neighbors, and given the capital investment, he knew he would need to get his neighbors on board, too. He added that the products provided by Praxis are not necessarily intended or priced for the individual home owner, so help from the neighbors was imperative.
Britton’s story is not much different. She explained she too needed high-speed and broadband service that just wasn’t available or dependable through the satellite service. Britton works as a freelance photographer and emailing mega-megabyte size photos was too time consuming with the satellite. She said she would have to go to Mammoth or even Los Angeles to get the bandwidth and access she needed.
One of Hartstrom’s customers is a second home-owner and self-employed who relies on the Internet for his job, Hartstrom explained.
Like Hartstrom, Britton said her endeavor into being an Internet service provider was not entirely unselfish, but she said she hopes the improved access can be a valuable resource for others, “We want people to move here, to live and work here.”
