The Digital Cliff

[altivo]

That's a term used to describe the abrupt decay to unusable of a digital signal at a certain distance from the transmitter. The point at which this occurs depends on the height of the transmitting and receiving antennas, the terrain between them, the frequency of the signal, and various other factors. I got around this evening to looking at

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[altivo]

Proper installation of fiber would fix a lot of woes in this area, but of course it costs money and the payback would be spread out over ten years or so. Not the sort of thing we get from American corporations these days.

We "have" wired telephone, yes, when it works. Often full of static and occasionally no dial tone. Lines buried in the 60s and poorly maintained for 50 years have pretty much deteriorated. The same terrain that limits digital television limits cellular access in this part of the county as well. My phone uses the Sprint network and though Sprint shows us as a solid coverage area, we normally get only one or two bars anywhere on our property, and frequently none. I don't know about Verizon, but want to find out. AT&T coverage is nil.

Power here is dubious too. Daily flickers that reset anything with a digital clock, such as microwaves, VCRs, etc. are pretty much ordinary. Outages that last from a few seconds to two or three minutes happen probably once a month. Outages that last several hours, sometimes more than a day, come a couple of times a year. We've learned that running computer equipment without a working UPS is a very bad idea here. Because our well depends on an electric pump, we have to keep a portable generator as well. Horses and sheep need water whether the power utility cares about it or not.

I looked at the satellite radio offerings three years ago because it was an option I could have had in my car. At that time, I was pretty unimpressed. The stuff available from either Sirius or XM didn't look like anything I'd listen to. The prices didn't excite me either. Now I gather that the providers are on the verge of bankruptcy and I'm not surprised. They were just pushing the same mush that broadcasters have been slopping around for decades now. We get good reception of Chicago's PBS affiliate but I never liked their programming decisions even when I lived there. We get fair reception of WNIU from Rockford, but their programming is sparse on the features I like and doesn't include the BBC or the folk music programs.