Surfing Wirelessly in the Boonies!


As I type this I'm sitting in the Cafe 290 in Manor Texas of all places, having had a fine chopped steak and a milkshake, wondering at the miracle of technology. Manor, which can't seem to get itself a grovery store or a public playground and which is still reeling from a fire which burnt the town down in 1954 has free wireless internet in its best known
feeding establishment.

As a Manorite myself I have had to deal with the nightmare of trying to get internet in rural Texas. The cable company wasn't interested, the phone company can barely provide a line I can talk on, and satellite is a joke. I had to get together with a neighbor and put in a T1 to get internet to our neighborhood because cheaper, more consumer-oriented options just weren't available.

We distribute our T1 wirelessly, and apparently we're not the only people to have that idea. A WISP out of Austin called waveforward.com has brought free internet to downtown Manor, and apparently it's already a hit. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since Austin is the most wired city in America and it's only 20 miles away, but what kind of twisted genius thought that Manor was the next place to debut the power of wireless internet?

It's a good development, but leaves me a bit bemused. There are so many more mundane things which Manor seems to be unable to acquire, yet in this one, esoteric technological area we're ahead of the curve. Go figure.