Draft Horses Used To Lay Fiber-Optic Cable 154
mysqlrocks writes "In Vermont, FairPoint Communications has enlisted draft horses to help lay fiber-optic cable in remote locations. Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin has pledged to bring broadband to every last mile by 2013, including many remote areas that have been neglected in the past. Private companies have been unwilling to invest in the expensive infrastructure needed to reach these areas. However, Vermont's congressional delegation helped to secure $410 million in federal money earmarked for broadband development and Vermont has partnered with private companies, like FairPoint, to bring high-speed Internet access to all Vermonters. From the article: 'The difficulty of getting cable to "every last mile," is where Fred, the cable-carrying draft horse, comes in. "Hopefully it pays off," says Hastings. "We could maybe get a four-wheeler in here," he continues, gesturing to the cleared swath of boggy, fern-studded terrain that he's working in today. But definitely not a truck, and Fred's impact is nearly invisible. Residents rarely complain about a draft horse tromping through their yards.'"
Re:only one? (Score:4, Informative)
No.
Fred is 14, and he’s been laying line for five years. Desmarais, who lives in Westmore, has laid line with draft horses for 31 years, and he learned to drive a team on his father’s farm in Barton when he was young. He travels to Amish country in the Midwest at least once a year to appraise new equipment and buy a horse, if one catches his eye–as Fred did one year while Desmarais was in Indiana. Desmarais has four draft horses, another Belgian and two Percherons: a second team lays line for FairPoint elsewhere in the state.
It's only high-speed if they actually hook you up! (Score:4, Informative)
Living in Vermont, we had DSL from Verizon, and then Fairpoint, for a number of years. Then we made the mistake of moving...next door. It was a legitimate god-damned nightmare, I tell you. We wanted to have internet up and running in the new place by the time we moved in, and they said no problem. They get the address, and give us a date to expect it by... The date comes, nothing happens. We call, they give us some excuse about a workorder error, and we go through the whole thing again.
The next date comes, nothing happens. We call and they tell us that they couldn't find the service address. We work that out. Next date comes around, NOTHING HAPPENS. It turns out there's NO WIRING IN THE PLACE, and they say they can't install. At this point, we've paid for an extra month on the old apartment, as well as rent on the new apartment. (Something that, frankly, we were not financially capable of doing.)
We actually do the line installation from the box to the apartment ourselves, and get back to Fairpoint. Oh but what's this? The workorder has been cancelled and we have to start all over again. (And yet, for some reason, two days later we receive the DSL starter kit at the new apartment.)
The majority of our problems stem from the fact that they swear up and down that the building only has one unit. (Number TWO, no less. Did that not seem a little STRANGE?) So we gave up and called Comcast. Gave them the address, and they asked "Apartment 1 or Apartment 2?" and we had cable internet and digital voice service a week later. The DSL we had been getting from Fairpoint was 3 megabits down, and 768kbits up...with the wind. The phone service sounded like shit, and both were prone to strange failures on a near-constant basis.
Our Comcast cable is 1.5 megabytes down (with boosts up to 2.4), and 1 megabit up on a bad day. The digital voice service is crystal clear, and we get more services than we did from our traditional carrier...including nationwide free long distance and the whole nut. And it is even CHEAPER than Failpoint's fail-ass DSL and phone service.
So, I guess what I'm saying is, FUCK FAILPOINT.