Richford Area Wireless Internet Access

The author of this article can be contacted at richard@heurtley.com.

Fairpoint has hired wireless Internet access provider RidgeviewTel to fullfill Fairpoint's promise to extend the availability of high-speed Internet access in Vermont.

RidgeviewTel's service plans range from $30/month for 512Kbps to $60/month for 1Mbps. A full-speed modem dial-up connection is about 53Kbps. Many people in Richford live too far from the telephone switching station to get a full-speed modem connection.

A representative of RidgeviewTel's Milton office obtained public information from the Richford Listers' office concerning three potential antenna locations:

The Kaytec plant
Joseph Guilmette's lot on Corliss Road
A hill in South Richford

A few years ago I wrote a computer program to calculate line-of-sight cellular coverage areas for different potential antenna locations in and around Richford. I posted the results here:

http://www.richfordvt.net/coverage

That effort included two of RidgeviewTel's proposed sites. It didn't occur to me to include an antenna at the Kaytec plant, but erecting one at the top of the plant's resin silo is an excellent idea.

I revived the old program and calculated coverage areas for the three sites and Jay Peak with the following conditions:

The RidgeviewTel antennas are 20 meters high.
The customers' antennas are 5 meters high.
The maximum range is 10 miles.

The charts are color-coded the same as the cellular charts. Light blue dots are RidgevewTel antennas, dark blue dots are places of the author's interest, and covered regions are shaded green (close) to yellow (middle) to red (far away) from the nearest antenna.

These coverage charts are entirely speculative based on guessing the antennas' locations, height, and range. Do not rely on this information to make any important decisions.

The small images are about 450KB. The medium images are about 1.5MB. The large images are about 5MB.

Kaytec